Defiance: Tommy's Life
by shenandoahok
Summary: Tommy fights to maintain his relationship with Rynn, and saves his sister from the midwestern sex-slave trade.
1. Chapter 1

Disposable God

The apostasy that happened after the Votans arrival on Earth left the strongest of Atheist aghast and appalled according to the writings of twenty thirteen. The people furthest from God couldn't believe how fast the righteous right fled from their religious beliefs. Bible burnings became so prevalent that the news media stopped filming them. Entire towns burned stacks of Bibles because their God became obsolete in the realization of new beings arriving to Earth. When the arks entered the Earth's atmosphere, most of Christians thought they could find solace in the words of the Bible, but the majority of them didn't find anything. There wasn't a scripture that explained the arrival of the Votans. They wrestled daily with the words of God and the alien ships above their heads; but at the end of the day, many of them rejected the words in the Bible. The Christians overwhelmed the churches, but none of God's houses could give them peace of mind. The words of the pious preachers seemed phony and trite. For so long, man thought he was the only sentient being in the universe, the sole architect of technology; and when the ships entered Earth's atmosphere, the righteous threw away their religion, their God, their very way of life. The Christ became disposable, an idea used to trick an individual out of his wealth. When the Votans came, Earth had a mass apostasy-not even the Satanists held on to their religious beliefs. With each tardigrade movement of the ships across the open blue sky, man's belief in a God evaporated. By the time the assassination of the Votan UN member happened, the majority of humans had decathected from religion in the belief that their God was false.

I sat in Clancy's old hovel of a home a shipping container above the jail, and read through some antiquated newspaper clippings that dated back to twenty thirteen-the year of the Votan's arrival. The dust formed on everything in sight because nobody had been in his hovel for nearly a month. I wiped some of the dust off an old, army green footlocker to see what was inside of it, and found the stash of newspaper clippings. He took great care in the way he kept them in a binder wrapped in plastic covers. The paper was old, but still in good condition. Some corners looked tattered, but they weren't as flimsy as I would have thought.

Some old food lay on a small end table next to his recliner that had some insidious looking mole on it. I put on some plastic gloves that I got from the Doc, removed the rotten food, and wiped down the table with some bleach water. I used the bleach water in order to scrub the jail-house floors when we had a bleeder in the jail. The Doc told me a million times to keep the bleach water on hand because new diseases popped up every day, and many of the people on the fringes of society weren't practicing cleanliness.

Clancy had some old pictures of his family glued to the wall in a small room in the back of his house. Amazingly, he was actually young once without the creases in his face. I had never seen an old picture of him in my life, and it was actually refreshing to know he was young once. He actually wore a smile in many of his old pictures that he took before the war. The war had changed him though. Every day, he wrestled with his feelings about losing his family in the Tulsa battle, and often apologized when he felt his feelings interfered with his work. He lost all of his family, and now all he had was the shrine. A pair of his military dog tags hanged off a nail hammered into the wall. According to his dog tags, he had a severe peanut allergy, and that was a shock too because he ate them all the time. I guess that wasn't that big of deal because everybody knew the terraforming not only changed the planet, but every creature on the planet. He kept a group picture from his old unit that had all his buddies in it. On the back of the picture, he scribbled the words, "Screw God!" It was an old picture with tattered sides, but Clancy must have kept it close to his heart. He had the word deceased written by the names of most of the guys in the picture. I went ahead and wrote deceased by Clancy's face just to keep it updated. I found some of the nonsense written about them funny-even though nothing was truly funny when put in the right perspective. I never knew Clancy joked about anything, but war had the unfortunate ability to change a person into a bitter man. Nothing but heartache, lost dreams, and death existed in that small room, but I collected all of his stuff, and stored it in the basement of the mayor's office. Some day somebody somewhere would want to make a museum about Defiance's beginnings, and Clancy would have to be frontpage news. I locked up Clancy's old domicile for the last time, and remembered when he threw me a birthday party last year. Kenya made the cake. Amanda sang the Happy Birthday song. We had a good time. He was a good man, and I'll miss him a lot.

I don't know if God-the Earthbound God-existed because I had never been exposed to him as a kid. The Votans arrived on Earth prior to my birth, and my parents perished at the hands of a murderous gang of hoodlums when I was only four years old. I won't elaborate more on the early demise of my parents because I don't remember all the events that took place. But when I think back to those tumultuous times, I remembered the gang kidnapping, abusing, and nearly starving me to death. It wasn't until I found Iroza-an Irathient marauder searching through wreckage from the Arkfall-that my life took a turn for the better. When I say life was better, I mean I had a family that fed me, that talked to me, and that raised me. But at the same time, they had faults that didn't mesh with my life now. During my upbringing, we did what we had to do in order to survive. Irocuz was a ruthless man in the Badlands, and he didn't hesitate to kill another man for booty.

Iroza, yet, took time out of her day every day, and gave thanks to the Irathient god, Irzu. She tried to shield me from all the bloodshed on the nightly runs, but I saw plenty. From a very early age, she taught me that Irzu had a special plan, a guide for all the lovers of the natural world. The Irathient god had one rule above all others: every creature played a role in the grand plan of nature. But my Father, he didn't have any use for a god in his life. He once told me that Irzu would make him pay for the lives he took, and he tried to change his ways as I grew older. He wanted to set a positive example for me.

It was Irzu that brought me to Defiance, and helped me understand my calling to become a lawkeeper. I wasn't the nicest person on the planet when I arrived to Defiance. My attitude wasn't the nicest in the world because I had the mannerisms of an Irathient warrior. Datak immediately associated me with a feral Irathient, but I didn't say anything when he said it. Clancy automatically thought I had been with a gang the whole time, and I just let him believe that. But even though I said a gang raised me, I always felt Datak knew the truth.

My Momma didn't want me to leave the business of pirating wreckage in the Badlands; but when I told her about the tugging feeling in my heart, she told me to follow it because it was Irzu calling me. She sat me down after I took the ritual to become a man, and told me that I would have to take a journey into the Badlands. She gave me a charge blade, a po-tech pistol, and a bit of food and water. I left out of the house with only the clothes on my back when I was only fourteen-years-old, and went into the Badlands in the hopes of becoming a man. The task was easy enough because all I had to do was spend a week on my own without dying. I remembered the days were well over one hundred degrees, and I found trees with a lot of shade in order to block the damaging rays of the sun. By the first day, I had run out of food. I took out my charge blade, whittled a stick into a spear, and killed a squirrel. It wasn't my first time eating wild squirrel cooked over an open flame. I didn't have any problems at all skinning that little rascal, cleaning out the guts, and sticking a stick through its body. The charge blade did most of the work for me. I roasted that rodent until the outside of it was charred black. I picked the meat off the little rodent until all I had was a bag of bones that sat in a pile next to my left foot. After I ran out of water, I knew I didn't have long before the Badlands took my life. I prayed to Irzu several times before I came up on a plethora of clean water. It ran down a large mountain into an underground cavern. All of the vegetation around the rivers was green and large. I saw some berries; but since my Momma never gave them to me, I didn't eat any of them. She told me a thousand times never to trust berries in the wilderness, so I went out looking for another squirrel, but I didn't find one.

On the third night, I guess I had traveled over fifteen miles from home, and I longed for my Momma. I knew she probably was worrying about me, but every child needed to take the journey into adulthood. I came up on a large volume of dense foliage, and I heard a noise that sounded like a wild animal. The leaves on many of the trees appeared to be almost tropical in nature, and some of them hanged a few inches from the ground. Many times it was hard to see if anything existed underneath the trees unless I pulled back the overhanging branches. They provided more than enough shade in the brutal sunlight that beat down the Badlands. Again, I heard something that sounded like a child's cry, but I wasn't sure what it was. Some of the strange animals sounded like small children until they ripped out a throat or tore a body into pieces. I pulled out my po-tech gun for protection, held it in the ready position, and searched the area for the strange noise. Honestly, I thought some kind of edible animal made the noises; but to my surprise, it was a sick Irath child, a girl. Her thick hair full of sweat, and her skin had bright red rashes. Under one of the thickest shade trees in the area, she lay on the ground in a blue blanket covered in the pox. Her parents had wrapped her in the blanket near the hybrid oak tree with a bit of water and some food. She shivered without any control because she had a severe fever. I pulled back the covers in order to see how badly she had the pox on her skin, and she had rashes everywhere. Bright reddish skin, crying in agony, and dehydrated, I didn't think the child had a chance of surviving. She was literally on her deathbed because of the pox. She had a severe case of the Chicken Pox, a fever, and hives all over her small body. Her face looked emaciated and she had the look of death in her eyes. She looked pallid without any strength to hold her head up to look at me. In due time, I expected that she would die under that oak tree, but part of me felt I could help her with the medicines that I carried in my bag. My Momma made sure I had the things she thought I'd need in the wilderness, and now I really did need them. Since many of the Iraths didn't trust inoculations, preventable diseases like the Chicken Pox wreaked havoc on them, and caused many beautiful Irathient kids to die needlessly. My Momma had given me some pain medicines that had the ability to reduce a fever, and I smashed up the medicine in some cool water, and forced her to drink it. The medicine wasn't aspirin, but something my Momma concocted that she learned how to make as a child. She had made me enough pills to last months. She didn't have the strength to struggle, but I do remembered the fear in her eyes. Her arms were so skinny that I prayed to Irzu as I tried to get her to drink the water. She laid her head back down on the ground with tears rolling down her face, and I gently placed some healing ointments on her rashy skin. She kind of looked at me, and tried to smile, but couldn't muster up enough strength to do so. Her thick orange hair looked woolfish, and unkempt.

I watched over the young girl until she fell asleep against the old tree, and then I went deeper in the thick forest in order to find something wild and meaty to eat. A squirrel or rabbit-or even a possum would do me good, but I wanted something meaty enough to feed the child in order for her to regain her strength. The chicken pox weighed heavy on any person's system, but it usually ravished an Irathient child's system for reasons that I didn't know. It was a warm summer day, and everything seemed quiet enough until I saw a rattle snake slithering through the grass. It moved at a fast pace, but I had a lot of experience hunting because of my adoptive father, Irocuz. I had eaten rattlesnake plenty of times on scavenger hunts with my family, and they loved the taste of rattlesnake meat. It was lean, white meat that almost melted in the mouth. The snake squirmed through the thick grass, and I tightened the grip on my spear. I felt the sweat swelling in my throwing hand, and I feared the weapon might fall to the ground. I didn't want to miss the shot because my stomach rumbled from little to no food. Honestly, I had only one opportunity to kill the snake; and if I missed, it would probably attack me. I took my spear, watched the snake with a keen eye, and then rammed the point through its head. I took out my charge blade, cut off its head, and placed it over my shoulder. I don't know why I felt pride in that victory because I had seen Irocuz kill snakes plenty of times. It was really nothing to it. When I walked back over to the young girl, the child had started to sweat profusely, and I knew then her fever had broken. I gutted the snake, started a fire, and cooked it for us to eat. It didn't take long for the fire to cook the snake just right, and the smell permeated throughout the entire area. I hadn't eaten rattlesnake in some time, but it was one of my favorite wild dishes. It tasted like chicken. I helped the young, Irathient child up, and fed her some of the rattlesnake meat. At first, she didn't seem to want any of the meat, but I insisted that she eat a little bit of it. The majority of Iraths didn't trust people of other races, especially humans. After I insisted she eat the snake, she finally grabbed it out of my hands with her weak grip. Stuffing a little bit of the meat in her mouth, she chewed slowly, but tried to eat it the best she could. I gave her another pill, and continued to put the healing ointment on her skin. So many Iraths died from preventable diseases like the Chicken Pox, and I feared for the girl's life.

"I'm not going to let you die," I said when I applied the medicine onto her skin. "You're going to be okay."

She drank the water from my flask over the next day, and I noticed her color returning. She sat up against the oak tree, and ate some more of the leftover rattlesnake, but she stayed reticent. Several times I spoke her native tongue, but she didn't respond until later in the day. She eventually looked up at me, and said in Irathient, "Ahiha." I didn't expect her to thank me for all the work I did because many of the people in the wilderness had lost their manners. But at the same time, she was left out here in the Badlands to die, and I didn't have the strength inside of me to let that happen.

After a few hours of leaning against the oak tree, the young child dozed off against the tree. I took my spear, walked back in the deep green foliage, and watched for any movement. I wanted to kill a possum or squirrel-or even a rabbit before the sunset. I didn't want to use my po-tech weapon with so many Hellbugs on the loose roaming the Badlands for food. The Badlands was a dangerous place, and everybody who grew up in the wilderness knew that. Anybody stepping into the Badlands had to have several methods of protection because many beast like the Hellbugs attacked in teams. I wandered deeper into the woods in order to find something to eat, and I saw a rabbit about thirty feet in front of me. It nibbled on some of the grass, but it didn't seem to noticed me watching it. Quietly, I raised my spear above my head, and watched the rabbit with a keen eye. It continued to chew on grass like it didn't know I was behind it, and I felt I had a good chance of killing it. When it paused for a second, I hurled the pointed staff at the creature, and it went through its head. I felt good about killing the creature in one shot, but I didn't want to make too much noise about it. Once I collected the rabbit, I tied it to my waist, and searched for some more food in the wilderness. I wanted to kill as many edible creatures as possible because the little girl needed the food for strength. When I approached a bush of berries, I wanted to pick some of the blackberries, and taste them, but my Momma told me a thousand times never eat the berries-even the edible ones. Some of the berries looked like other berries, but were toxic if eaten; and if none of the other animals were eating the berries, then that meant they weren't edible.

Angered, a wild dog stood approximately one hundred feet in front of me growling like he wanted my rabbit. I didn't know if the dog was alone or in a pack; and if I used my po-tech weapon against the wild beast, it would draw the attention of other dangerous creatures. I slowly backed away from the angry dog, but it inched closer to me. The way the dog growled at me made me nervous because I wasn't sure if I had the skills to kill an aggressive predator like the dog. When it started running towards me I said a little prayer to Irzu before I stuck my spear through the beast's chest, and it fell to the ground, dead.

I dragged the limp, formerly ferocious beast back to my little camp site in order to clean it, and the Irathient child remained a sleep against the oak tree. I checked around the tree ensuring nothing pernicious like a snake crept into her blanket. She seemed okay, but I had to be sure. I skinned the dog with my charge blade, removed the innards, and slowly roasted the beast in the fire. It had a pleasant smell that I liked, and it woke the child up from her deep sleep. While the dog cooked, I took out the ointment, and tended to the girl's sores. It looked like they were slowly healing, and I had a good feeling that she was on her way to recovering from the pox. Unfortunately, I didn't know her parents or where they were located. Many of the Irathients were nothing more than pirates that stole and raided towns. Her parents could be all the way in Texas for all I knew.

The Irathient child sat up against the old oak, and tried to stand to her brittle feet, but stumbled against the tree. I didn't know what she was trying to do, but she didn't have the strength to stand on her own. Without my help, she stumbled to her feet again, and slowly walked into the deeper woods in order to relieve herself. I attended to the meat, and tried to keep her in my sights. There were plenty of wild animals lurking in the Badlands who would devour her without thinking about it. So, I watched her every movement as she squatted down in the distance. I heard a grunting in the wind, and at first I thought it was the little girl; but when I listened closely, I realized it was a Volge soldier. I had seen one once, and my father killed it with a charge blade, but he described their ways to me. I ran over to the little girl, grabbed her, and ran with her into the woods. I could see the soldier creeping over the hill, and at that point, I feared the monster would kill us. Worried, I placed my right hand over the child's mouth in the fear that she would scream when she saw the humongous beast. I pulled my po-tech pistol out of its holster, watched, and waited for the beast. It stopped approximately three yards in front of me, and then it spoke.

"I know you're there, boy," he said in a throaty voice. He had the deepest voice I had ever heard in my life.

I looked over at the little girl, and said, "Stay right here."

A look a fear stuck to her face, and she finally spoke. "Don't …"

"It'll be okay," I said with a smile on my face. How did I know that? I didn't. I just had an innate feeling about the moment. When I walked out into the open, the Volge soldier laughed.

"Irzu said that you'd be here," he said with a scowl on his face. Nearly seven feet tall, he looked massive compared to any humanoid creature I had ever seen. "You can call me Di-ank."

"What do you know about Irzu, Di-ank?" I asked.

"Not much. But I had a dream that you'd deliver him to me for protection," he said, "You and I have been chosen."

"I don't understand," I said in a brittle voice.

"Go," he said, "Your journey has only begun."

I ran into the woods, grabbed the little girl, and we scurried off into the wilderness. We walked deeper into the forest past several berry bushes, and ended up in a strange place. The entire time that we trampled through the thick woods I had that Volge soldier on my mind. I didn't know his name or anything about the mission he talked about on that day, but I believed him. After a few hours of walking, the little girl felt too tired to travel, and she wanted something to eat. All I had on me was my po-tech weapon and charge blade; and even if I came across something edible, I didn't know if firing the pistol was a good idea. Guns drew the attention of unwanted miscreants.

We came upon a small pond with the clearest water I had ever seen in my entire life. It was surrounded by some large rocks on either side of the body of water. I could see some massive fish swimming aggressively in the water, and I knew just one of them would make a good meal. I hovered over the pond for a few minutes in order to study the fish as they swam. When one of the fish swam past me, I stuck my hand into the water, and tried to capture the fish. I didn't have a chance of grabbing that slimy creature. I looked over at the little girl as she seemed a bit frustrated at my inaction. The night drew near, but I didn't have the skills needed to catch a fish by hand. I didn't want to fail in my mission of catching the fish because the little girl needed something to eat. Frustrated, I stood in the water, searched the bottom of the pond, and found a catfish hiding in a hole. I stuck my right index finger in the creature's mouth, and pulled it to the surface. The fish had to weigh more than ninety pounds, and provided more than enough meat for us to eat. The child had a big grin on her face when I brought the fish to our small camp area, and I slit its belly open. I didn't take long cleaning the fish, and it took approximately two hours for it to cook.

We ate a lot of the fish, but it was more meat than we could consume in one setting. The Irathient child dozed off in the middle of the grass, and I watched the stars for a few hours. I went to sleep against a jagged rock, but I didn't sleep long. Under the Badland stars, I felt it was far too dangerous sleeping without being on guard. Hellbugs crept in the middle of the night, and the possibility of one attacking was high. The snapping of twigs-my Momma-startled me. She had walked out of the thick woods early in the morning, and walked over to me.

"You've proven yourself," she said with a grin. Looking over at the child, she said, "She suffers from the pox."

"I gave her some medicine," I said with a soft voice.

Iroza walked over to the child, looked at her face, and then said, "It's working." She looked back at me with a grimace. "We'll take her with us."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When I turned seven-years-old, I drew a picture of Irzu in the image of my Father, Irocuz. It had the long orange hair, tied into a ponytail, and holding a spear. If anybody looked like a god, I thought Irocuz did when I was seven. He was the tallest person that I knew. He towered over me, and talked in a deep voice. At that point in my life, two years had gone by since they found me, and Iroza, my Momma, had me studying between all of my chores. I sat on the living room floor directly in front of Irocuz's easy boy that he found in an Old World dump. It was an old brown chair that he refurbished, and I wasn't allowed to sit in it. It was the man's chair, and since I was only a child, it was no place for me. Momma kept photos of us plastered on the wall opposite the door to the outside; it was fashionable during those years to put family pictures on the wall in the living room. She had Irocuz's photo on the left, then her picture, and then my picture. Iroza had a book shelf that sat behind Irocuz's chair, and it went all the way up to the ceiling. She had been teaching me how to read English, and it was a language that I had a hard time remembering.

They never spoke English in the house, but it was emphasized in my studies. I had some free time between dinner and cleaning my room, so I sat in the middle of the living room floor to draw. At first, I didn't have a clue of what to draw, but I wanted to draw a picture of my Daddy. Once I drew on the orange hair, I wanted to give the picture a name, and I wrote Irocuz over the figure's head. I didn't think anything about the ramifications of making my Father into god, but it didn't go well with my Momma. She grimaced when she saw it. She had one hand on her hip, and shook her head in disagreement. She had told me so much about his blessings that I thought Irocuz made the perfect god, and since he was the provider of all my family's needs, I thought he was god. Unfortunately, my Momma took the picture from me, and told me it wasn't prudent to put Irzu in the physical form. It was one of the few times that my Momma raised her voice to me. She stood in the living room, with her hands on her hip, and discussed the reason to never make images of our god. I remembered that her hair was braided tightly in the tribal style, and she wore brown, utilitarian clothing. She had a strong, somewhat protruding forehead with large, round green eyes. She was a thin Irathient woman, and almost as tall as my father.

"Geeta dina zeppa ti Irzu!" She grabbed the paper out of my little hands, and looked at the picture for a moment. "Finka fi Irzu'o zeppa es Finka tro iae viti nayingat. Viti trania koso wata radiv." It translated to "To worship a picture of Irzu is to worship the people it represents. It can only end badly." She looked me directly in my eyes, and said, "Geeta finka masigayree." That translated to "Never worship skin."

She sat me down on the ground, and helped me concentrate on Irzu for nearly thirty minutes to invoke his spirit. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a good lesson nonetheless. She told me about the early years of the Irathient race that nearly destroyed itself over the image of Irzu. Some said that he had a ghostly skin color while others said that he had the skin of the dirt of the ground. The different images of Irzu caused different reactions in the souls of his followers, so they banned it. Some Irathients from different tribes used the image of the venerated Irzu, and the god we all loved became a means to oppress her Irathient ancestors, going way way back some fifty thousand years. Her voice brittle with breathy noises, and I realized the picture I drew saddened her. She said millions of Irathients died fighting over the image of Irzu. The last thing she said about the picture was this: One day Irzu will be in the physical form. He'll bring harmony to all the races. She didn't have any tears in her eyes, but I knew without question that I stepped outside of an unwritten boundary. I took the picture from her, ripped it into pieces, and gave her a hug. She smiled, hugged me back, and then allowed me to practice with my charge blade until dinner was done.

Momma finally finished making the meal, and I had to set out the plates on the table. It was a small dinner table when Iroza took out the center piece. The only time she placed the center piece in the table was when we had company, and that was almost never in the last two years. Irocuz was a suspicious man, and didn't trust anybody on his property unless it was family. The arkhunts often ended badly, and he felt everybody who wasn't family was an enemy. When strangers came to the house, he had his potech pistol at the ready, and they never made it passed the front door.

I had menial jobs around the house at seven, and it made me feel like I was doing something. I did a lot of stuff around the house like milk the pows, slaughter some pigs, and even fillet the hellbugs for its delicious meat. For the first few years with my Irathient parents, I thought they would leave me in the wilderness. Iroza read me the story of Hansel and Gretal all the time, and it was my least favorite story. I don't know why she kept reading it to me, even after I told her I didn't like it because it made me think she would tire of me, and leave me in the woods.

Momma cooked hellbug for dinner, and she had some of those fluffy, white breaded rolls with butter to go with the meal. Irocuz believed in moderation when it came to eating, but if I could, I would sneak off with the whole basket of rolls, and eat them behind the barn. I always wanted more than one, but Irocuz wouldn't allow it. Every now and again when he went outside to check on his crop after dinner, Iroza would give me an extra roll, and tell me to keep quiet about it. It seemed that every meal had plenty of corn, and Irocuz's freshly grown okra. I helped with Irocuz's okra harvest, but he was strict in his execution of everything, and I always worried he'd yell at me if I messed up. It seemed dropping an okra seed into a hole was a chore when around Irocuz, so I always tried to find other projects around the house that didn't need his supervision. I was quickly learning that Irocuz had his way of doing everything, but it wasn't the only way, and in some cases, the right way. Momma had given me an Old World Dictionary, and I found that Irocuz niggled me on everything I did, so I was always fighting for his approval.

The voyage across the stars never once caused the Votans doubt about their gods; and until this day, I haven't met an Irathient, Castithan, or any person from the stars give up their gods because of meeting humans. Why didn't the human god withstand the invasion? That will always baffle me because Earth turned on its deities, and many of them didn't hesitate to forsaken their religions. One day Irocuz came into the house with a Bible, and he was laughing so hard that I thought he was going to pass out. If I had come into the house laughing like him, he would have called it disrespectful to my elders, and had me sit in the corner. He sat on his old, refurbished chair, and picked up the Bible, and started laughing aloud. Iroza came into the living room with some delicious helllbug nuggets, and gave us both separate baskets. I was able to enjoy my nuggets, and ignore Irocuz's laughter. He'd grab his bottle of alcohol, and drink himself to sleep, and that was one good quality about him. Iroza often called him a sleepy drunk.

"What's all this silliness?" She asked. Irocuz handed her the Bible, and she read a bit, and started laughing too.

"This book should be called the Big Book of Bull Shit," Irocuz said, "Who would teach this irreverent nonsense to their kids?"

He palmed my head, and messed up my hair, grabbed his bottle of gin, and walked out on the front porch. He drank until Iroza and I pulled him into their bedroom, and put him to sleep. This was a nightly routine of his, and sometimes he would say he needed to quit drinking so much, but he never actually tried to stop. He would go into a rage if he didn't have access to his bottle, so Iroza kept spare bottles in a hiding places all over the house. If Irocuz ran out of his stash, she grabbed a bottle from her backup cache, and that was how she kept Irocuz passive. He sometimes made his own alcohol, and some other Irathients would pay him script for his alcohol. But like many of the hardcore drunks, he drank most of his supply.

I looked at Irocuz as the man of the house, but he did things that worried me all the time. I remembered when I was six-years-old that he hit Iroza in the face, and left a knot on her forehead. She fell to the ground, and begged him to stop, and when he went to hit her again, I laid on top of her head, and he hit me in the back. He wobbled over to his old, refurbished easy chair, and rocked back and forth with his bottle of booze. Iroza and I laid in the floor crying for what seemed like hours. He drank himself to sleep. I thought I would have peace that night once he closed his eyes and went to sleep, but Iroza wasn't done. I don't know what was going through her mind when she laid on the floor bleeding from her head, but it must have been something bad. When she finally stood up, she pulled a charge blade out of her bra. It glowed so brightly that I thought the energy was coming from her soul. I didn't even know she kept one in her bra. I can only imagine that she placed it there earlier in the day in anticipation of a violent confrontation with Irocuz. Many of their seemingly innocuous arguments turned violent. She lumbered over to Irocuz with the charge blade out of its sheath, and she placed it to his neck. I was so scared that I couldn't breathe. I started hyperventilating, and I passed out on the floor. When I awoke, she was holding me in her arms, and Irocuz was still in his chair slobbering all over the place. I actually felt relieved that he was still alive. He was the only father I had, and even though he talked with his hands when he should have been using his words, I loved him.

Jeb called me into the jailhouse to give me a counseling statement over my recalcitrant behavior, and I was prepared to give him my badge. I thought about walking into the jail house, tearing off my badge, and slamming it on his desk. It was how I felt about things. I was in a mood because he would have done the same thing. My Momma, the woman who loved me more than anybody ever would, was in danger. I knew he'd have a reaction when I left the city to free my Momma from the clutches of the Volge. I tried to give up my badge, and I would have gone home with my parents once I saved Momma. Irocuz could have taken his farm off the market, and we'd farm it together like in the old days. I felt saddened for a moment because I knew Irocuz was dying, and his days were few. Momma wanted him to sell the farm because I didn't want to farm it after his death. She was old. She didn't have the patience or the strength to keep it up and running. That meant I had to give up my badge, and in the back of my mind, I think my life would be complete if I did give it up.

Jeb looked so smug behind his desk. He had his feet propped up, smoking on a cigar, and drinking some of his awful coffee. I swear his coffee tasted like he funneled it through an old tire. The first time I drank his coffee I thought he stirred hellbug crap into it. He called my actions concerning the rescuing of my Momma borderline insubordination, and then chided me for an hour for taking Irisa with me. He stood behind his desk with his buzz haircut, and read off a list of charges against me. He kept a scowl on his face for so long that I wondered if it was his natural look. Irisa stood by my side, and told him that she stood by me because it was the right thing to do. It was a cause that she understood. Without saying a word, I simply nodded my head in agreement to the reprimand, because I knew he would have done the same thing. I didn't have any regrets over rescuing my Momma from the clutches of the Volge, and I never would. He knew how I felt about the entire situation, but he had to put my disobedience in writing. As soon as he finished with my counseling statement, he shook his head in disgust, and then ripped up the reprimand. I thought he accidentally made a mistake, and was going to write me another one at first. He tossed the shredded paper in the trash, and then said, "I would have done the same thing, son."

I could only imagined what would have happened if I hadn't made the effort to free my Momma from bondage. She freed me from the bondage of the Badlands, and I would have died without her. I couldn't help but think back to my sister, Ireena, for a moment, and no matter how hard I tried to find her, I couldn't. Whenever I felt down, the thoughts of her would flood my memories, and I hated the fact that some men kidnapped her.

Rynn had stopped by the office earlier in the week, and told me that she had a hit on her location. She had been searching for my sister for over two years without a hit, but she promised me that she would find her. Even though Rynn didn't care about me, she cared about my sister. She stood in front of me with a stern look on her face, lips curved downward, and told me in a somber voice that she might be in Apostasy. That wasn't something I wanted to hear, and the idea of her being a sex slave sent a bad feeling to my heart.

I thought Rynn hated me on some level; it was the way she approached me. Her mouth never formed the words, "I don't like you." She never once told me that. She never said, "You, Tommy. I hate you." It wasn't her way. She just didn't take time to talk to me. I would talk to her in her tongue, and she would speak to me in English only. It was frustrating because she had her ways. My uniform put her in a mood, at least that was what Momma said. She was visiting my family the day that the kidnappers came, and she vowed to use her resources to help find her. Rynn often came around the old farm, and helped Momma with making hellbug dishes to sell in the Bazaar. She didn't have much to say to me, and that was just the way it was. She made sure I wasn't welcomed in her circles. Whenever I came to the farm when she was there, she'd just scowl at me or give me a grimace, and then just walk away. My Momma said that she would grow out of it, but I didn't think so. It was the way she was, and I couldn't do anything about it.

I always thought Rynn was good people, and even though she could act feral at times, I knew her. We had a fallen out a year before Nolan arrived to Defiance, and now she couldn't stand to look at me. She looked at me like she wanted to cut my jugular.

I remembered back when Ireena first went missing, and how much stress it caused my family. Rynn and I traveled to Kansas City once a week, and asked people if they saw my sister, and we didn't get one hit. The dusty roads and long nights under the brutal skies nearly killed us, but we were tenacious in our search for her. This was before our falling out; it was before I donned the lawkeeper uniform, and of course, it was a time when we sat behind the old barn, ate hellbug nuggets, and admired the stars. It was a frustrating time when our rift happened. I told her that I was thinking about becoming a law-enforcement officer, and she objective. I didn't realize at the time how vehemently she was opposed to that job. Rynn rarely cursed in those days, and when she did, it meant she was beyond pissed. After two years of not finding any information about Ireena, I told her I was planning on becoming a lawkeeper.

"You fucking do it, and I'll never come over again," she said. She didn't actually say it like that, but it was in a guttural voice, and a growling noise at the beginning of the statement and at the ending of the statement. "I'm not fucking kidding, Tommy."

Nolan wasn't the same man after he took the position as the lawkeeper, and I think Irisa noticed the change in him too because she would scream at him in Irathient about it. He would just nod, say a few meaningless words, and Irisa would run out the jail. He went from a risk taker to a prudent and wise man who cared about doing the lawful thing more than anything. Irisa had her ways. She sometimes went off the rails, and Nolan would have to guide her back on to the right track.

"How can I fucking keep up with you, Nolan?" Irisa asked. She had makeup running down her face, and in my opinion, trying to look like a human woman. "Yesterday you were the worlds number one scofflaw, and today you're mister do the right thing."

"This is a serious job," he said, "Right, Tommy?"

"How did I get into this?" I asked.

'You're supposed to have my back," he said.

I'm not taking a sardonic stance against Jeb in any way. I was simply noticing that the lawkeeper job changed him for the better. He tried denying it, but she knew him better than anybody. If she said that he changed, then he probably changed. I didn't know Nolan for that long, but I had met them before Amanda appointed him as the Lawkeeper.

I tried to keep my Irathient family apart from my work life, and now Irisa knew I was raised by Irathients, I worried that she might pry further into that life. She didn't understand that I spoke the Irathient language because I didn't do it at work. I knew every nasty thing she said about me, but I didn't call her on it. She could be nasty at times too. Her mouth was as dirty as a hellbug's ass. She was disrespectful too, and sometimes I thought she was mimicking Nolan. One day I walked into the office, and they were having a flatulent contest. It went on for about fifteen minutes after I arrived, and then Nolan had to go take a shower and change his clothes. I didn't know what to make of them because Iroza and Irocuz never acted in such a way. I mean they had many flaws, but they always kept it proper outside the house.

"I think Nolan likes Amanda," I said. I was sitting at Nolan's desk and Irisa was sitting at my desk across the room. She leaned forward on the desk, and scoffed at me. I just ignored it.

She stood up walked in front of me, and said, "Yeah. They're probably fucking! Fucking like dogs, those two."

I didn't know how to respond to that. It was so crass I cringed for a moment. I mean every Irathient had some gaucherie in their behavior, and that was the truth, but Irisa was purposely trying to get me to react. She started hitting her left fist against her right hand, and then said, "He's pounding it like another arkcore hitting the Earth."

"Irisa!" I exclaimed.

"I'm just saying. He has a harem of whores from here to California," she said. She slid her hand across the desk, and then said, "With chlamydia and the crabs. Leaving 'em scratching and burning is his middle name. Jeb Leave'em Scratchin' and Burnin' Nolan." She laughed. "Chinoc, Tommy!"

I had a look of bewilderment on my face, and I replied, "I don't know what that means." She called me stupid Tommy all the time, but I pretended like I didn't understand. She was looking at me from across the room, and it felt weird. I didn't know what to make of it.

She pointed at me with her right index finger, and said, "Inyee, Nia wedocai." She had a serious look on her face, and it bothered me a little. I guess she expected that I could speak the language because she said, "I am watching you."

"I don't understand," I said.

"Iannaca, inyee fefa," she said. She slammed her hands on the desk, and said, "Eerah!" She pointed her right index finger at the desk. I tried to keep calm because I knew she was trying to see how I reacted. She was cunning, and I had to be coy. When a pretty girl propositions any man, there's a reaction. She asked me, "Do you want to fuck? Right here?"

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Efargay vit!" She screamed, "Forget it!" I stood to my feet.

I walked over the front door, and said, "I'm leaving until you calm down."

"Swaya, chinoc Tommy," she said. That translated to "Bye, stupid Tommy."

At some point, I was going to have to come clean to Irisa. She wasn't stupid by any means, and probably suspected that I spoke Irathient. I had a lot to tell her about my family. I didn't know how to explain about how the kidnapping of my sister gave me the desire to enter into law-enforcement. Every day, I would ask wayfarers if they had come across her, and show them a picture of her. It was the perfect picture of her. She was next to the pond in her bathing suit. Her hair was in the traditional Irathient style, and she was smiling so big. It had been three almost four years since she disappeared, and it killed me on the inside. But to be honest, that wasn't my biggest secret, and my other secret would surely cause some problems with Irisa.

I think many people have had more than one person that they truly loved. Relationships come and go, and I have always thought that to some degree. I had a relationship before Irisa, and I've avoided talking about her. It was easy to talk about hemorrhoids than to talk about my previous relationship, and in some ways, I don't think of it as a previous relationship, but a problematic relationship in the here and now. She hasn't spoken to me intimately since I put on the deputy law-keeper uniform, and the last thing she said to me was, "I love you, but I can't be with you while you wear that uniform." I asked her to say it in Irathient, and she said, "I will no longer talk to you in my native tongue."

My father had said the same thing to me when I told him Clancy hired me as a law enforcement officer, and he became belligerent. He would only speak to me in broken English, and it hurt my heart so badly that I could barely function. And then when my fiancé did me the same way, I pleaded with her to change her mind, but she wouldn't do it. I didn't cheat on her. I had never cheated on her or thought about it. I never missed spending special time with her. I went through rituals for her that had me fighting her father with sticks, and he nearly killed me twice. I laughed about it a little, but my laughter was mixed with a lot of pain because I see her all the time. She came into town to sell her goods, and make money for her tribe, and I even patrolled past her booth, and there was nothing more painful than loving somebody so much who pretended like they didn't know me. So, I walked past Rynn's booth, and asked one simple question, "Vo inyee oragra Nena?" That translated to "Do you love me?"

Irisa was patrolling on the other side of the bazaar, and I was standing next to Rynn's booth. She had in her tribal braids, and she still wore the ring that I gave her three years earlier. I'd like to think it meant something to her, but it might have been fashionable to wear. She was working hanging her trinkets, and when I asked her, "Vo inyee oragra nena?" She paused for a moment while hanging her trinkets, and then went back to work. She turned to me for a moment with tears rolling out of her eyes, and said, "Ayo."

That basically meant, "Get the fuck out of here." It's a word that comes from a purely emotional response, and people in relationships use it on each other in an argument. I quickly realized that I was so starved for her love that I felt some measure of relief from the tears falling from her face and telling me to leave. It was cathartic, and I felt somewhat bad about that because her tears brought me joy and pain. I'm not sadistic by any means of the word, but when an Irathient woman cried, it means she cared. It meant she had deep feelings for me.

When she first broke it off with me, it hurt so badly that I thought about walking naked out the front gate, and letting a hellbug kill me. I took a reprieve back home to stay with my sick father for a week, and she came to visit me. She had heard that I took time off, and she thought I had quit my job. When she found out I was on a short vacation, she helped me with my Momma in taking care of my father, but she slept in the loft. I begged her to share my bed, and that I would refrain from sex.

"Are you getting sex somewhere else?" She asked in her monotone voice. Her stare was unyielding.

"No," I said.

"Then you want sex from me?" She asked. She walked over to me, and then said, "Be honest?"

"I want you to love me," I said, "I want you to be my wife."

"Only on one condition,' she said. She sat against her roller with arms folded.

"I want you so badly, Rynn, but if I can't have all of you then I will pass," I said. I walked over to her, put my right hand on the side of her face, and she rested her head in my hand. I kissed her softly.

"I can't give in to you, Lil' Panther," she said, "Give up the uniform. Come home. Make Irocuz proud." She moved my hand off her face. "Be the man you're supposed to be. This uniform doesn't allow you to be you." She shook her head as to say no, and walked around me, and over to the loft. "You're selling yourself short, Tommy. That's for damn sure."

When I returned to work, I thought Rynn's visit to the farm lunged our relationship forward, but I was wrong. It was wishful thinking on my part. When Clancy ran the jail, a hard rain hit Defiance. I grabbed my umbrella, and ran over to Rynn's booth, and protected her from the rain. I guess we had been broken up for only a few weeks at the time, and her anger was still fresh. I protected her from the rain with the umbrella, and she stood next to me with folded arms and her countenance was completely off.

"Get out of my life, Tommy!" She looked over at me, and she had a look of anger on her face. I continued to hold the umbrella so she wouldn't get wet. "I'm in so much pain. Can't you just let me heal in peace?"

"I promised to protect you," I said, "I haven't broken my promises."

"That's not fair," she said, "You knew exactly how I felt about this." She pulled on my uniform sleeve.

I looked over at the next booth, and Meh Yewll was looking at us. "Oh. This isn't where I belong." She scurried off down the road.

"When your boss finds out you're in love with a Spirit Rider, he's going to fire you," she said. She had a devious smirk on her face.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I asked.

"Indeed," she said. She grimaced. "I'm so pissed at you, Tommy." She looked over at me. "You're looking skinny."

"Damn you, Rynn. How do you expect me to look? You broke up with me. I can't eat. I can't sleep."

"That's not my problem," she said, "I don't mean to be a hard ass, but I have a line that I won't cross."

I handed Rynn the umbrella, and walked away.

"It's your fault, Tommy. Your pain is Shakespearean," she said, "Go cry yourself to sleep, little baby."

"Screw you, Rynn," I said.

"Nope. There's a price," she said.

"Whore!" I suddenly heard some foot steps running up behind me, and she threw me down in the mud, and we wrestle around for a few minutes, and ended up kissing for a long period in the mud.

"Don't ever call me that, Tommy, okay?" She slowly stood to her feet, and she was all wet and muddy. "Promise me, Tommy? Never call me that, okay?"

"If I asked you to roll around with me in the mud you wouldn't," I said, "So I did what I had to do."

She hugged me for a minute, and said, "We have to stop this. Just let me go, Tommy?"

"I can't," I said, "I won't let you go."

"Why?" She asked.

"'Cause you're my everything, Rynn," I said, "Can't you see that?"

"I don't want this," she said as she grabbed my uniform. "Can't you see that? It's my only request."

Meh Yewll-the Indogene town doctor-walked into the jail house with her bald head, and she immediately scurried over to Jeb's desk. I don't know why I didn't trust her, but she was always hurrying around Defiance like she was putting out fires. She had her own set of secrets, and I didn't know any of them. I caught her watching Irisia for a moment; it wasn't a gentle look of friendship, but one of some kind of hate. I'm not a mind reader, but I think I can tell non-verbalized hostility. For a moment, things were so intense in the office that I felt the need to place my gun on my desk. I didn't do it, but my guard was up. She headed over to Nolan's desk, and Irisa gave her the middle finger. I didn't know why they hated each other so, but they did. She had a troubled look about her, but I didn't understand what was wrong. I had never seen her stressed since I've known her. The Indogenes worked on pure logic, and didn't believe in any god whatsoever. They worked off the power of science, and believed everything had an explanation rooted in science-even if they didn't know it at the time. As far as I knew, they didn't like humans, but tolerated us. Meh Yewll wore a black utilitarian garment that didn't have any finesse at all. It just had a bunch of pockets to carry her jerryrigged nonsense. I couldn't have imagined her wearing anything provocative if I tried, but I'm sure she engaged in sexual activity. She looked agitated, shaking, and somewhat disheveled. Her bald head glistened off the lights, and I sometimes wondered if they shaved their heads or were they naturally bald. Jeb took noticed of her uneasiness, and asked her to take a seat, but she wouldn't do it. Whatever had her riled wouldn't allow her to relax.

"What've we done?" She asked emphatically. Pacing in front of his desk, she had a look of fear in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" Jeb asked with a worried look on his face. He was the kind of guy who furrowed his brow, and asked the penetrating questions. He tapped his pen on the desk a few times, and then prepared to listen to the doc.

I walked over to Jeb's desk to listen to her story, and she said, "A man came into my emergency room … he told me he met an Irathient and Indogene looking kid in the Badlands."

"What's the problem?" Jeb asked with a quizzical look on his face.

"He said the Indogene child was born of the Earth."

Jeb laughed for a minute. "That's insane, Doc. You're telling me the Earth gave birth to a child?"

"But it's not. It's probable that the Earth gave birth to another species of man."

Iroza had told me a story about the Earth giving birth to the Irathient god, and when I was a child, I truly believed that would happen. Surprisingly, I didn't find Doc Meh Yewll to be as logical as I thought she should be. She should have known better than to believe some sick guy right off the street about seeing a boy god born of the Earth. I almost started laughing, but she was a highly respected doctor. I didn't want to undermine her statement, but I had already stamped her with my crazy stamp.

"So, you believe this nonsense?" I asked.

Doc Meh Yewll turned to me immediately. She looked me dead in my eyes. I thought she wanted to snap me in half, but she put her hands on her hips, and said, "I know it sounds crazy, Tommy, but a superior being has been born from the Earth. It's true."

Irisa laughed. She sat on top of my desk, and said, "I'm not ready to believe."

"Tommy, prepare the dodge," Nolan said, "We're going to check it out in the morning."

I did a maintenance check on the Dodge, and made sure it had a spare tire. Irisa had taken the vehicle out earlier in the week, and she never did her after maintenance checks. When her and Nolan first arrived to Defiance, she brought the vehicle back with a baby hellbug in the trunk. I caught it, fillet it, and made hellbug chunks. It reminded me of when I used to make hellbug chunks for Ireena.

The baby hellbugs would storm onto the property, and I would shoot them with my potech gun. I'd collect four or five of the little buggers, and fillet them in the barn. Ireena would clean up the guts, and burned them. She was always helpful around the farm. She liked to wear her pink sweater with the bunny on the back. She wore some Old World Jeans called Levis with some Old World Converse shoes that Iroza found during an arkhunt. I handed her a basket of fried hellbug nuggets, and we sat up in the loft, and ate them. Those were the good days of my life with my sister. She looked out into the yard, and seemed so peaceful with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was only eight years old at that point, and she had a lot of questions on her mind.

"What do you think Antarctica is like?" She asked.

Iroza often said that Antarctica was a place of magic, and every woman was a princess and every man was a prince. She said that the place was so perfect disease didn't exist there. "It's gotta be Heaven," I said, "I bet they have the best hellbug nuggets."

"That's what I think," Ireena said, "Maybe one day we'll go there for lunch."

"It would be the best lunch," I said, "Chocolate ice cream for dessert."

"Wow! That would be magical," she said, "Hellbug meat pizza?"

"You know it. It'll be dripping with the creamiest of cheeses."

"My parents?" She asked. She bit into her nugget, and looked out in the yard. "I guess I took the steam out of this engine."

I smiled. "I would hope your parents would be there," I said.

"I just wanted to know if they loved me," she said.

"Of course they loved you," I said.

"How do you know?" She asked.

"You were wrapped with care in those blankets," I said, "By a person that took the time to care."

"I barely remember them," she said, "I didn't want to forget them."

"You have me, Iroza, and Irocuz," I said. She walked over to me, and hugged me tightly.

"I love you, Tommy," she said, 'You're the best brother in the world."

I stepped away from the Dodge, and a stream of tears was falling down my face, and I couldn't stop crying. I tried to wipe my eyes, but the tears kept flowing. My whole body felt stressed over the cry. I looked up, and Rynn was standing on the other side of the Dodge watching me. She was holding a basket, and probably had some sandwiches dropping them off to clients.

"What?" I asked.

"Dammit, Tommy," she said. She walked on the other side of the Dodge, and held me for a minute. "Thinking about Ireena?" Rynn couldn't stand seeing me hurting, and I was the same about her. When she saw me crying, it stopped her in her tracks, and she would give me her full undivided attention. It was a card that I used sparingly on Rynn. It was the only power I had at my disposal with her, and her crazy stance against my lawkeeper job.

"Yeah," I said, "Just having a bad day."

She pulled out a sandwich, and said, "Here. You need to eat something. Keep your weight up." She kissed me on the forehead, and then walked away. I watched her the entire time in the hopes she would look back at me. When she was about half a block down the street, she looked back at me, waved, and then walked out of my sight.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Irisa and I sat in the NeedWant after work with a bowl of French Fries on the table in front of us. It was quiet around six 'o clock, and the rumbling miners hadn't made their way into the bar. Some strippers practiced their routines on the stage, but I didn't pay that much attention to them. This was the routine of the day, and it became trite for me. The first time I saw the ladies wiggling their naked bottoms across the stage, I thought I had died, and floated to Antarctica, but now it was commonplace, a natural part of the NeedWant.

When I first arrived to Defiance, Clancy brought me to the NeedWant, and an Irathient girl named Idika Yani with long, orange hair that went well past her butt came over to my table. Everything about her was near perfect, and she was pleasant to the eyes. Her nasal passage was the perfect size, and she had bright green eyes that looked like they were painted by the gods. She didn't have a single blemish on her face, and if I said I found her attractive, I would be a liar. I could see her perfections, but as soon as she spoke, I saw all her flaws. Clancy walked away from the table, and met up with an old, rundown bar girl across the floor, and left me with Idika. I bought her an expensive drink, and she talked to me for a while. The sun had gone down, the air temperature had cooled, but it was still early.

"For fifty-five scripts, I'll ride you like a hellbug queen," she said, "Pop your tootsie pop."

I was so frustrated by her proposition that it had to show in my visage. I wasn't feeling well because Rynn had already called off our relationship, and Idika had just activated prejudices that I didn't know existed. I was looking at her as if she was better than a mere prostitute. I expected her to be at the level of Rynn or Iroza, and because she didn't meet my criteria, I was disgusted by her.

"Finicki, miat es inyani?" I asked. That translated to, "What is your tribe?"

She looked at me for a second, and then said in a soft voice, "Finicki Idacruz." That translated to the "Tribe Idacruz." She looked uncomfortable, and wouldn't look at me. With her eyes on the floor, she asked, "Lil' Panther, inyee na?" She asked if I was "Lil' Panther?"

"Thei," I said. That translated to "Yes."

"I feel ashamed," she said, "You saved my father's life on the Muskogee Arkfall."

"Geeta Chodi," I said softly.

"Rynn is your wife?" She asked.

"Thei," I said.

She quickly stood to her feet, and said, "Thank you for the drink."

The craziness didn't move into the NeedWant until around ten o'clock in the evening, and I would already be at home by that time. After ten o'clock, the brothel opened up, and many hard-up miners hooked up with a girl for the night.

I was a little stressed out over how Rynn acted when I helped her breakdown her booth earlier in the day. She apologized for how she had treated me for the last year, and gave me her father's necklace, and I thought that was strange. I looked at it for a moment after she placed it around my neck, and then I got nervous.

"What's this?" I asked. I looked down at the emblem for a minute. "You cherish this. You know I love you?"

"I know," she said, "You're the world to me." She smiled at me, but it didn't seem genuine. It was one of those ominous smiles that had me a tad nervous.

"What are you planning, Rynn?" I asked. I placed her face in the palms of my hand. "You're not planning on hanging out with a hellbug queen."

"No worries, Lil' Panther," she said, "No worries, okay?"

I stood in the middle of the Bazaar for a moment, and my heart raced. I felt like something was wrong because I had known Rynn since I was sixteen, and now at the age of twenty-two, she acted like a complete stranger for the first time. She said what I wanted to hear, but it wasn't her. It was like somebody else was pushing her buttons. I folded up the last piece of her booth, and placed it in her roller. She stood on the outside of her roller, and looked down the street for a moment.

"You don't want to be around me, Tommy," she said with a grimace on her face. She looked down at the ground for a second, and then over at me. Her hair was a tangled mess, but I could still see the innocents in her. "Bad things are going to happen."

"What bad …?"

"Just don't get involved," she said. She cut me off, and I didn't have a chance to finish what I was going to say. "Just stay away from me, Lil' Panther."

I paused for a moment, and thought about what Rynn was saying. She was looking over at me with a worried look on her face. "What?"

"I really did want to marry you," she said, "I did."

"We can marry tonight. Amanda can marry us and Nolan can witness it," I said.

She laughed. "We're married according to my tribe."

"I know," I said, "That's why I'm frustrated right now. What are you planning?"

"Just go," she said, "It'll be okay."

Betha-the Liberata waitress-knew exactly what I liked to eat, and she had the bowl of hot, freshly made fries waiting for me. They didn't sell hellbug nuggets in the NeedWant; it was sold in the Bazaar, but not in the NeedWant.

"I know you want those nuggets, but..." Betha said.

"It's okay," I said, "I'll have some for lunch tomorrow."

She always took care of me whenever I entered the NeedWant, and she probably was one of the hardest workers in town. The fries were golden brown, hot, and full of salt, and that was exactly the way Irisa liked them too. She sat across from me with a half smile on her face, but I could tell she had a hard life. She had that dead look in her eyes because of life on the road with Nolan. Irisa told me that Nolan specialized in broken promises.

"I think he makes promises just to break them," she said. Her countenance was of utter anger. "He promised Antarctica, but I'm stuck in this dump."

"He wants you to be happy," I said.

"By appeasing me? Screw that," she said, "Just be truthful."

We took turns sticking our hands in the bowl of greasy fries, and then dipping them into the salty Ketchup. It was a big bowl of fries, a basket full of fries: brown, crispy, and hot. We sat in the oversize booths on the sidewall by ourselves, and I sat across from her. I didn't expect her to come with me to the NeedWant, and it felt good to be in her company-even if she didn't say anything positive about life. She had a pessimistic view of the world, and it probably had to do with Nolan. She had her hair fixed provocatively, and I liked it. Her orange hair wasn't necessarily fixed sexy, but braided nicely. It reminded me of Rynn's hair, but I tried not to mention her name too much because I loved her, and my heart was torn. I wanted to enjoy my time with Irisa, but all I could think about was Rynn. She was up to something, and I didn't have a clue what it was. I loved Rynn, but she had secrets, secrets that she didn't tell me, and even though she said she wouldn't marry me as long as I wore the lawkeeper uniform, she told me everything until today.

Irisa looked over at Kendra at the bar, and said, "Eww. See, that's who Nolan's fucking. That's his type."

"Oh," I said.

"Amanda's cute and all. Pretty. She's just too nice. Nolan likes to bend'em over, and whatever hole he hits is the hole he drills. He's had complaints, you know? Lots of complaints." She bites into another fry, and then said, "That's exactly why we had to leave the last town."

"What happen?"

"He screwed a tranny," she said, "And her husband was mad."

"Isn't that technically a woman?" I asked.

"Thing about it is she plopped her penis on the table, and Nolan's drunk ass still hit it."

"Wow," I said.

"Once he sobered up he was receiving death threats," she said, "It was madness. When he saw the woman sober, she had like a five-o'clock-shadow, deep voice, and a huge ass penis." She laughs a little. "He then blames me. I was pissed."

"Because he slept with a tranny?"

"No, Chinoc Tommy," she said, "'Cause he blamed me." She looked over at the dance floor, and said, "He always blames me."

I couldn't help but think Irisa—from the story she told—had deep, undocumented mental issues. She had a strong abhorrence for some of Nolan's ways, and it showed. We munched on more fries, and the room was quiet for a moment. She looked up at me for a second, and said, "What was it like growing up with Irathient parents?"

"I had a great life, Irisa," I said, "Plenty to eat. Love. I had it all."

"The perfect life?" She said.

"No. It wasn't perfect," I said, "My father drank. Sometimes he could be abusive."

"Oh."

"I studied every day," I said, "But..."

"What?" She asked.

"I disappointed him when I became a deputy lawkeeper."

"Damn," she said, "No wonder you never talk about him. "Can you smell the Irathient oils?" She asked in a soft voice. She stuck her right risk up to my nose.

"They smell nice," I said with a smile.

She probably purchased the oils from the Bazaar, but I wasn't sure. I knew several of the vendors made the oils, and sold them in the market. In any case, she smelled wonderfully with her body doused in the scented oils. Most of the times she smelled like a woman who put a lot hours working with her hands, but she made an extra effort for the little outing at the NeedWant. She changed out of her lawkeeper uniform, put on a white blouse that emphasized her near perfect body. She ate her fries slowly, and kept staring at the table as if she had something important to say.

The NeedWant cooked the French Fries golden brown, light salt, and a cup of Ketchup on the side. Irisa said that she can't eat fries without plenty of Ketchup, but she liked it on the side for dipping. I ate a few more fries, and they tasted pretty good when they were hot; Irisa seemed to enjoy them too. She drank water with the fries and I had a cold beer. It was the first time that I got her to share a meal with me, but she informed me that it wasn't a date. Did I think we were on a date? Probably. It was one of those dates were I simply assumed it was a date because she agreed to go out with me. But at the same time, I felt some relief that it wasn't considered a date. I don't know how Rynn would feel if I had sex with Irisa. I can only assume that Irisa must have sensed what I thought, and wanted to clear up any confusion before it started. I don't know why she made life so hard, but she did. My Momma told me that I needed to have patience because Irathient ladies played hard to get. And from what I could tell, Irisa was a tease who offered me sex several times when she didn't think I understood her. I had thought about bending her over my desk several times, and taking it to her for how she treated me at times, and then I would feel ashamed of myself for thinking that.

She looked down at the half empty bowl of fries. "I know you like me," she said in a soft, raspy voice. At first, I didn't know if I heard her right, but I did. She held a fry with some Ketchup dripping off of it in her right hand. Looking over at the door, she had a grimace on her face. I thought she was going to start crying, but she was only wearing her brooding face. I wanted to hold her, but she hadn't given me permission to touch her like that. Repeatedly, she kept looking over her right shoulder towards the door, and seemed somewhat on edge about something. "Just give me some space, okay, Tommy?" She scowled at me for a second, but I knew she didn't mean it. I felt that she feared love. "You got secrets, Tommy." She pointed the limp fry at my face. "Shifty eyed devil."

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"Dude," she said. She placed the limp fry back in the bowl. "You don't think I don't notice you and Rynn arguing on the daily? You two fucking?"

"No," I said, "What makes you think that?"

"I'm not going to be your side chick, Tommy," she said, "Don't do that to me?"

"Okay," I said. I was freaked out for a moment.

"It's just I don't know you well enough yet," she said with a soft voice. "Just don't go rushing me, Tommy. Okay?"

Reaching across the table, I grabbed her hand, and said, "No need to rush." She pulled her hand away from me.

"I can do without the touchy touchy stuff," she said, "You're fucking Rynn. I won't be fooled."

"Why do you think that?" I asked.

She reached over to me, and grabbed the necklace from around my neck, and looked at the writing on the back. "It says to Rynn, dickhead."

"I found it," I said.

She put her right hand to her forehead, and had her right index finger and thumb in the shape of an L. "You're a fucking liar." She shook her head in disbelief. "Can't believe you're like Nolan. Oh my god!"

"Do I even look like Rynn's type?" I asked.

"See! That's what I originally thought until I met your momma," she said, "They look just a like. Oh my fucking god!" She laughed for a second. "So, you used to fuck Rynn," she said, "So, will I be the side chick?" She looked down at the cold fries, and ate a few of them. "Can't believe I have feelings for your lying ass."

"I haven't lied," I said, 'Rynn and I aren't fucking."

"It doesn't matter. Just don't know if I'm going to stay in Defiance anyway." She had a dejected look on her face for a moment, and then she took a small sip of water. The bar seemed a bit crowded for some reason, but my focus was only on Irisa. She ran her right hand through her hair, and I could tell the entire conversation made her nervous. Talking about relationships didn't seem natural to her, but she seemed to know Rynn and I were more than two random people arguing in the Bazaar.

"What kind of man are you, Tommy?" She asked. She laid her head on the table. "I'm falling for you more and more every day, but you're hiding shit. Why would you do that?"

"You wouldn't understand," I said.

"Try me?"

"Rynn and I have been a couple since I was sixteen?" I said.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" She asked.

"We're married according to her tribe, but she broke up with me almost two years ago," I said, "She tried to make me choose between her and the uniform." I took a drink of water, and Irisa held my hand. "She chose for me."

"So you love her?" She asked.

I smiled. "I can't imagine not loving her," I said.

"I'm going to need time to think about this," she said, "Okay, Tommy? You know I like you, but this is a lot. I have to process this shit." She looked up at me with her large green eyes, and I knew she meant it, but now I had fear in my heart. It wasn't fear of a relationship with her, but the fear that Rynn and I were completely done at this point. I felt stuck for a moment, and then I decided that even if I had a relationship with Irisa, I would always love Rynn. I just couldn't imagine my life any other way.

"I think you're afraid. You put on this mask of toughness, but you're not tough," I said. I held both her hands gently, and said, "Pain is just as much part of life than pleasure." Irisa looked down at my hands for a moment, and pressed the back of my left hand on her right cheek. "We'll just take it slowly."

"We'll take it slowly," she said with a half smile. "We'll take it slowly."

We sat quietly across from each other, and I held her hands. It's funny how some of the simplest moments in life were the best, and then Kenya snapped a picture of us. We didn't have time to smile, and Irisa seemed a bit overwhelmed by the unsanctioned photo op. She didn't have time to cover her face, but didn't complain too much either. She sat back in the booth, ate a few more fries, and then looked over at the clock on the wall.

"It's getting late," she said. Her visage was one of seriousness, and she looked at me directly. I could tell that she was actually thinking about what I had said, and I think that was a good thing. "Had better get going."

I went to my flat, sat in the living room, and didn't know what to make of the night. I tried to think back to some things I had said, and had regrets. I wanted an enjoyable night, but I think I said too much. Rynn was on my mind. I couldn't shake my thoughts about her, and I don't think I tried to shake my thoughts about her. I found solace in focusing all my mental energy on her. Every time I would try thinking about other things, I would go back to thinking about her. It was like she was my goto thought. It was going on two years, and Rynn wasn't going to capitulate and I wasn't going to relent.

I felt like a liar and cheater, and quite frankly, I felt scared for Rynn because I sensed she was planning something crazy. I had her necklace around my neck, and I looked at it for a moment. "What are you up to, Rynn?" I whispered to myself. I wasn't going to get any sleep, and I realized that rather quickly. It was a little after nine o' clock at night, and I sat on my bed in my underwear. I needed to get as much rest as possible, but I was having a hard time closing my eyes.

I heard a faint knock on the door, and at first, I thought it was coming from my neighbor's flat. I wasn't expecting any company, so I didn't immediately jump to my feet. I laid in bed with the lights off in the hopes that I would fall asleep. When my head hit the pillow, I heard another rap on the door, and this time it was loud enough for me to recognize it was on my door. Quickly, I grabbed my potech pistol, headed for the door, and asked loudly, "Who is it?"

"Rynn!"

I opened the door, and Rynn walked inside covered in soot and dust. I don't know what she had been doing, but whatever it was, it had her hanging out in the dirtiest places in Defiance.

"Why are you so dirty?" I asked. When she walked past me, I looked into the street to make sure nobody saw her.

"It's not important," she said. She took off her clothes in the middle of the living room. It had been awhile since she had removed her clothes in front me. When she removed her shirt, she folded it, placed it on the floor, and did the same thing with her pants. She stood in front of me in her underwear and bra, and then she slid those off too. Her orange hair was wild; it had been months since she had braided it. The elements had beaten her face, and at times, she almost didn't look like the Rynn I had grown to love. Her face was somber, and I don't think I had ever seen her more serious in my life. Her pubic hairs had grown out of control, and her bush looked more dangerous than the Badlands. Her armpits looked like she had two orange haired trolls in headlocks.

Before I donned the lawkeeper uniform, I groomed Rynn's lady parts all the time. It was a ritual we did together. We would keep each other trimmed, and nobody could ever say that we were a wild, unkempt couple. I grabbed my razors from underneath the sink, shaving cream, and stepped into the shower with her. Rynn gave me an angry stare for a moment, as if she didn't desire my presence. She raised her right hand, high in the air, and exposed her hairy arm pit. I inundated the hairs with shaving cream, and slowly shaved her. We didn't speak to each other during this practice. Once I finished with the right arm, I did the same thing with the left arm. The shower had a small seat where she sat, and she propped up her legs so I could shave her pubic hairs. I soaked her orange pubic hairs with the shaving cream, and then I gently shaved her hairs into a heart. It took nearly an hour to trim that area of her body. Once I finished, I dried off her body with a large, body towel. After that, she reached into my closet, pulled out some of her old clothes, and placed on a white, see-through gown. She had panties in the closet too, but decided to sleep without them. She laid in my bed while I cleaned her hairs out of the shower. My underwear was in the middle of the floor, and I didn't have any intentions of wearing them to bed. When I climbed underneath the covers, I could see her bare bottom, and it looked pleasing to my eyes. I wrapped my arms around her while she laid underneath the covers, and she immediately shoved her buttocks up against my penis. I gently slid into her, and she looked back at me for a second. For about ten minutes every stroke was made with love. Every time I slid my hands over her breast, it was gentle. I slowly slid my left hand down her body, gripped her left hip, and pulled her closer to me. I reached around her body, and played with her vulva while I stroked her aggressively. Her body trembled underneath me, and she moaned uncontrollably. After about thirty minutes, I released inside of her like I had never done in the past.

Rynn sat up against the headboard, and tapped her right knee, and said, "So, you didn't use the pullout method, you didn't wear a condom, and you didn't give me any warning?" She was upset, but it was a kind of reserve anger. "We said all pregnancies would be planned. It wasn't ramblings of kids, Lil' Panther. We've always been responsible."

I looked at her for a second. She gave me a full-faced gaze, and her green eyes were watery. "I'm selfish," I said.

"You are selfish, Tommy. I saw you and Tishinka sharing fries in the NeedWant," she said.

"You were there?" I asked.

"Yeah. I had business there," she said, "The point is you're not being honest, and now this."

"You've made me a desperate savage, Rynn," I said, "You're all I've ever wanted." I was truly embarrassed by this conversation, but we had to have it. "My heart hasn't mended from our breakup, and now I'm out of control." I gently kissed her on the lips, and said, "I'm desperate, Rynn."

"I'll never forgive you if we have a baby, and you aren't a responsible father," she said, "'Cause what you did was a punk move. It doesn't fill me with confidence, and I demand from now on we discuss and agree upon how we engage in sexual contact. No accidents."

"I agree," I said, "Please forgive me?"

She laid back down in bed, and said, "You were already forgiven, chinoc Tommy. I just want you to be the man that I know you are." She looked at her watch, and said, "I'm up and out at four. It's eleven thirty. Get your sleep."

Jeb called me into work extra early the next morning to ride with him into the Badlands. Rynn had already left two hours earlier, and I headed to work around seven o'clock. I stuck my charge blade into my right boot, grabbed my shotgun, and po-tech handgun. I didn't have any clue on the situation in the Badlands, but any time we ventured outside the gate, I felt that gnawing feeling on the back of my neck. Clancy told me plenty of times that the gnawing feeling was nothing more than a much needed defense mechanism. The Badlands—according to the Indogene scientist—hadn't stopped reproducing strange and distorted creatures. Every trek through the unknown land outside of Defiance brought new adventures and more horrific methods of death. The plants and the trees, and even the flowers in the Badlands can kill even the best trackers in all the world.

Irisa remained at the jail on Jeb's orders, but I could tell she wanted to come with us. She had a feisty spirit, and didn't like to feel left out of the adventure. But when we hopped in the Charger, Jeb looked over at me, and said, "Do you think this is a new species of man?"

"Maybe," I said, "Meh Yewll is a scientist. She thinks it's true, so..."

"It's true," Meh Yewll said from the backseat of the car.

"Holy sheesh!" Meh Yewll's voice scared me for some reason. "I didn't know you were back there." She looked pretty cozy in the backseat, and didn't smile one time. She didn't believe in showing too many emotions.

"It's perfectly okay," she said.

I knew she claimed a man told her about a new species of man, but I wasn't sure if the claim had any validity. An Irathient scavenger came across what he thought was an Indogene child, but immediately realized that it wasn't Indogene, human, Castithan, or any species known on the planet. At first, the child looked like an Indogene because of its bald head, grayish skin color, and intelligence, but it didn't have the small hexagram irises. In addition, the child knew the thoughts of its Irathient babysitter, and that set the child apart from any creature on the planet. The Irathient took the child into its home in the Badlands, but realized almost immediately that it was something the terraforming produced.

The Irathient lived in a small mud hut approximately thirty miles from Defiance. I hadn't ever seen the place, but he had enough land for a small farm, and room to grow all the food he needed. The house was an old log cabin house with a fence around it. The farm was self sustaining. He said that he had found the child crawling out of a small hole in the Earth. When he spoke to the boy in his native, Irathient tongue, the child spoke to him in the Irathient language.

We knocked on the wooden door, and the Irathient caregiver opened up the door with a sawed off shotgun at his ready. He was a burly looking guy with wild hair. It was obvious that he didn't have a mate, and to be honest, good women were hard to find in the badlands. The house was warmer than usual because he was cooking with an old world pot belly stove. It smelled like fried potatoes and pow steaks.

"Could you lower your weapon?" Jeb asked.

"Who the hell are you?" the old irathient asked. He had a feral look on his face, and he didn't seem to care for company too much. The man lowered his weapon, and we walked inside.

"What's your name?" Jeb asked inquisitively. I was on his right side and Doc Meh Yewll was on his other side.

"Star," he said softly. The child didn't smile when he saw the Indogene in her utilitarian garb. He gave her a blank stare, and didn't seem to care for her too much. He stood near the Irathient, and held onto the man's garb. The Doc kept a keen eye on the little boy, and she had more interest in the child than anybody in the room. She had a small computer that she analyzed the kid with, and after she read what the screen said, she had a look of shock on her face.

When I saw the kid, I was amazed at how he looked. He had irathient facial features, but I could also see the Indogene genes in him. He was beautiful, yet odd. He had a baby like face, innocent, but at the same time, he appeared to be knowledgeable. His garb was all white, but utilitarian in its design. His eyes weren't as big as an Irathient's eyes, but they were larger than human eyes. His skin was somewhat grayish, but his eye color was pure black. I didn't understand how he stayed so clean in a dusty environment like the Badlands, but he didn't seem to have any problems with cleanliness. Meh Yewll seemed overwhelmed by the child, and approached him cautiously. She placed both of her hands on either sides of the child's face, closed her eyes, and meditated for a second. I knew she wasn't praying with the child because most of the Indogene were atheist. They didn't have any need for religion because it usually slowed down scientific progression. She almost looked as if she could have been the child's mother, but that wasn't the case at all. After holding onto the child's face for nearly five minutes, she stepped away from him with a cold stare.

"Just as I feared," she said to Jeb.

"What's wrong?" He asked with a furrowed brow.

"He's something the Earth produced," she said in a quiet voice. "He's an amalgamation of all the races."

The child clung on to the Irathient, grabbed his hand, and then said, "Ta-Ka, she plans on exterminating me."

"What?" Ta-Ka said with a scowl on his face. "Why would you kill the gift from Irzu, Indogene?"

"Nobody's going to exterminate anybody," Jeb exclaimed. "Are we?"

"We can't let this creature live," Meh Yewll said in a monotonous voice. She looked at the child with her cold eyes. "He'd throw this fractured world into the Dark Ages."

The Irathient pulled out his po-tech sawed-off shot gun, and told us to get out of his house. He had nothing but rage written all over his face, and I drew my weapon on the Irathient the child called Ta-Ka. The child placed his hand on the Irathient's weapon, and he lowered it. I immediately raised my weapon, and the child pointed at my gun, and it flew out of my hands. The weapon slammed into the far wall. The kid didn't have an ounce of rage on his face, but Jeb told us to back up out of the mud hut. I grabbed Meh Yewll by the shoulder, and we left out of the house.

"The child is more powerful than I originally sensed," she said with a look of fear on her face.

"I've never seen anything like that," Jeb said with a look of disbelief on his face.

"I have," Meh Yewll said with a grimace. It was the first time that I saw her display any emotion. "We produced a similar creature in the lab on my home world. We knew an unpredictable terraforming could produce creatures with unimaginable powers."

"It's a child," I said in a soft voice.

Meh Yewll gave me a cold stare. She walked over to me with a scowl on her face. She was no more than an inch from my face. "The Jesus of Earth preached for three years, and it ignited a religious movement that lasted nearly two thousand years." I tried to step back from her, but she persisted with telling me the history of Christianity. "Christianity impeded scientist that could have stopped plagues, deaths, and murders."

"But we're talking about a kid," Jeb stated.

"Don't you get it?" She asked. "It's an abomination! An anomaly in the programming. "

We stood outside of the small cottage, and Meh Yewll paced the ground. She truly seemed worried by the possibility that the kid was something more than a child. She wouldn't use the word god, but said that people would view him as godlike. I didn't know exactly what to think, but the thought of a being with the ability to speak every language, read minds, and move objects with a simple thought made me nervous. In addition, the kid was born—as far as I know—without a mother or a father; and on some level, that did seem like a god. As I watched Meh Yewll pacing, I remembered my mother saying that Irzu would return in an earthly form, and suddenly a spark of belief ignited inside of me.

Jeb walked over to me, and stated, "I'm not killing a kid."

"Me either," I said.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Irisa sat on the front steps of the law-keeper's office brushing her teeth when we pulled up, and she spit one last time, walked into the building, and slammed the door. She had spit toothpaste all over the steps, and I think she did it out of spite. It was the first time that I recall having toothpaste dripping down the steps of the Law Keeper's office. She poked her head out of the dim window with a grimace on her face. I couldn't tell if she was upset with me or if it was with Nolan. She looked angrier than usual, but I didn't know the reason. I never knew the reason for her brooding ways. It was a warmer than usual day, and the smell of fried food emanated from the Hollows. It was an uneasy ride back from the Badlands with Meh Yewll enraged over the idea of a deity existing. Her attitude about the entire situation was insane, and unbecoming of a person of her stature. She was the smartest person I knew, and I had never seen her act in such a manner.

"You should've killed that monster where it stood, Jeb!" Meh Yewll exclaimed, "This shit goes up the chain."

"What the hell, Doc?" Nolan asked.

"It's all fun and games until that little miscreant sets science back a thousand years," she said, "You'll see."

"I don't expect to live that long," I said.

"I know, right?" Jeb said. He laughed, but Meh Yewll didn't.

She didn't have any use for a god on any level because she was an Indogene, an individual who believed in science and facts over religion and faith. For such an intelligent being, she didn't mind taking the low road to prove a point. A ball of dust spiraled down the street, and I climbed out the back seat of the car, and stretched my legs a bit. The wind had picked up something awful, and the tiny particulars of dust beat against my face. Doc Meh Yewll complained that the boy would cause more trouble than the out-of-control terraforming itself, and he had to go for the good of the new world. I knew the Doc for several years, and this was the first time that I saw her vehemently nervous. She was adamant about taking out the boy, and I couldn't believe what I heard. She was the town's resident physician, and I never expected her harboring a malicious desire to destroy a precious life. She exited the car, walked towards the mayor's office, and Jeb kind of pretended he didn't notice her irascible behavior. She reiterated that some people-young and old-had to die for the good of the world, and Star, the little hybrid, was one of them.

Irisa gave me a cold stare when I walked through the door of the jail house, but I couldn't recall doing anything to upset her. She just looked my way with a kind of emptiness that I couldn't readily explain, but it made me wonder what was going through her mind. On some level, I felt that she didn't even notice me entering the room. I thought she'd be happy to see me, but that wasn't the case; it wasn't the case at all. She looked past me, and gave Jeb a razor-sharp stare that could slice bread. Immediately, I realized Irisa targeted Jeb and not me for all her woes because as soon as we entered the office, she tore into him for not taking her on the trek into the Badlands. Her orange hair looked wild and unkempt, and she looked like she had been crying. Even though I had crazy respect for the girl, I knew she wasn't raised by Irathient parents. Hair was a ritualistic practice that they took seriously. The braids represented a tradition that went back thousands of years before the Votans ever took flight for Earth.

"Why did you leave me here?" She asked.

"Somebody had to man the office," Jeb snapped, "So, thank you."

"Screw you, Nolan. Crack head bitch," she said.

"I screwed a crack head bitch once, and you never let me live it down," he said.

The reason I think he left her behind was because she wouldn't be able to handle the situation calmly. On some levels, I felt overwhelmed by the possibilities of Irzu walking the Badlands in a humanoid form. The idea of a god on Earth intrigued me. My Momma taught me so much about the Irathient deity that I somewhat believed the boy could've been the reincarnation of Irzu. When I think about the kid's grayish skin, large eyes, and Indogene mannerisms, I truly understood why my Momma took exception with me drawing pictures of Irzu. It wasn't my duty to imagine what form a deity chose to take. When a people made a false image of a god, it can corrupt the minds of the masses.

Irisa sat down in the far corner of the room, wrote in her diary, and didn't seem to notice that I existed. I'm not going to lie and say it didn't bother me that she can treat me like I was invisible, but it did. It bothered me a lot. I didn't expect her to fall into my arms like in some juvenile fairy tale, but I did want her to at least notice me. I watched her for a moment just to see if she'd look up at me at least one time; and the funny thing about the whole situation is, she did.

"Hi, Tommy," she said with a crooked smile.

Jeb sat behind his desk, and the phone rang as soon as his butt hit the chair. He said a curse, and then answered the phone. He said a few words, and then told me to follow him out the front gate because there had been a viscous hellbug attack that resulted in a death. Irisa, Nolan, and I took a short trek on the outskirts of Defiance, and we saw a horrific scene. I was in my roller and Nolan and Irisa was in theirs. I had seen Rynn and Sukar in town on my way out the front gate, and it felt good to see her. I nodded to her, and she nodded back, and it felt good to see her. I had been worried about her for a while, but she was with her father, so I knew she was protected. That meant a lot to me.

When we arrived on the scene of the mutilation, I saw a human body torn to pieces, and I didn't see anyway of determining if it was a male or a female. Blood was all over a large tree, and Nolan immediately noticed that the bones had been sucked cleaned. It was a typical hellbug attack, and when there was more than one, they'd easily tear a person into pieces. Irisa had said the man's penis was on the other side of the tree, and she didn't seem to have any empathy for the man. But when I saw the red Adidas sneakers, I knew exactly who the pile of meat was. It was Dalton Taggert, a thug who did a lot of shady business with several prominent people in Defiance. Clancy had a file on the man from when Defiance first formed as a community, but he never arrested the man.

There was a strong, musty smell permeating through the hot air, and I knew exactly what it was: hellbug pheromones. Irocuz and I used the pheromones to draw in hellbugs for a mass killing, and sell the meat to local vendors. We performed this task at least once a week. When Iroza wanted to cook a hellbug feast, I would find some hellbug pheromones, and spread them on a large rock, and within minutes, the buggers would descend upon the rock, and I would kill them.

"Let's head out guys," Nolan said, "This place isn't safe."

He was right about that. The pheromones were all over the place, and we didn't need to be anywhere in the area. I hopped into my roller, and drove back to the station. Nolan and Irisa were behind me. I had several bags of evidence with me, but there wasn't much left of the guy to bury. Unfortunately, I had a nagging itch on the back of my neck. Rynn was smart. She knew all about luring hellbugs in with pheromones, and when I pulled out Dalton's file, I quickly realized that he was a suspect in the death of Rynn's parents. I read through the file, and their killing had Dalton's signature all over it. I felt the file exposed Rynn and I needed to do something with it. Under no circumstance did I want to draw attention to her.

"What you got, Tommy?" Irisa asked. She was bouncing a rubber ball up against the wall.

"Oh. Nothing," I said, "Just doing some light reading."

Irisa stopped bouncing the ball, gave me a dirty look, and said, "You're probably lying."

I blurted out an uncomfortable laugh for some reason, and stuck the file into the back of the file cabinet. "You're not very nice."

"'Cause you have man whore behaviors," she said, "Like Nolan."

Nolan walked into the jail house, and said, "What about me?"

"You're a man whore," Irisa said.

"Well. Just as long as we're being honest," he said.

"I'm going to do a quick patrol of the area," I said.

"Okay," Nolan replied.

I walked into the Bazaar in the hopes that Rynn would be in the area. It didn't take me long to find her, and I walked up to her, grabbed her by the hand, and took her into the back of one of the clothing booths. The vendor had a plethora of clothing, and it was easy to lose oneself in the rear of the booth. She sat down on a stool, and gave me an ominous smile. Her hair was raggedy, and I wanted so badly to braid it. I placed my hands on her face, and kissed her long and hard. She looked down at the ground for a moment, as if she were ashame, and said, "It had to be done." She grabbed me by my legs, and pulled me close to her. She looked up at me. "Do you think less of me?"

I moved her hair out of her face, and said, "Nolan will solve this. He's going to find out."

"Let him," she said, "Just let me finish what I started, Tommy?"

"Why?" I asked.

"'Cause of my face, my parents, and my land," she said, "They stole my wealth and beauty in one evil swing."

"All you care about is revenge?" I asked.

"Don't cheapen what I'm doing?" She said, "Didn't an Old World Poet say 'The sweetest thing next to pussy is revenge?'" She rested her head on my stomach. "The greatest moment in my life was when you looked at my scarred face, kissed me, and said you loved me, Tommy. You made the ugliest girl in the Badlands feel like a princess."

"Rynn! You're not ugly," I said, "You're my wife."

"The best feeling next to you telling me how much you loved me was when that hellbug tore that evil bastard to bits," she said, "Don't take that from me, Tommy!"

"I'm going to lose you," I lamented.

"That's my only regret," she said, "If there was another way..."

"The only justice for us is the sword," I said. I hugged her tightly, and didn't want to let go. "Finish this, and run, Rynn. Run to Momma's house."

I backed out of the booth, and Rynn sat on the stool with watery eyes. I ran back into the booth, and hugged her one more time.

Later that night, we were called to the NeedWant, and another hellbug attack took place, and the poor bastard was eaten in front of Kenya. Blood splatter was all over the room, and a little had gotten on the Old World Felix The Cat clock. Kenya was overwhelmed by the hellbug attack, and as long as the monarch lived, the hellbugs would have a blood-lust.

"We have a killer in town, and their weapon is hellbugs," The doctor said, "I've never seen anything like this. What do you think, Tommy?"

"I don't know anything about this stuff," I said. I picked up a lot of the goo, and placed it into a plastic bag. I felt badly that I didn't feel anything for the man. He hurt my Rynn, and I wanted him dead. I was glad she found the men who killed her parents. They were disgusting people, and she was right about revenge: it was one of the greatest feelings in existence. It was cathartic.

It didn't take Nolan long to realize that Rynn was the culprit, and she went deep, down into the pit with the hellbugs, and I think she wanted to die. I don't know why she wanted to die, but I think she felt her revenge was complete. When Nolan put her in the jail cell, he and Irisa went home for the night. I had a few more hours on my shift before the night crew came into the jail, and Rynn sat in the back of the jail quietly. I gave her the prison suit, and she changed in front of me. Her legs were still smooth from when I shaved them the other day, and she watched me watching her.

"What will become of us?" I asked.

"It depends on he stars," she said, "I'll spend the rest of my life in prison, so..." I slid my cuff key over to her, and she said, "Tommy! No!"

"Now you want to be righteous?" I asked.

"It's about protecting the people you love," she said, "I'll die before I let you throw it all away."

"Isn't that my choice?"

"I"m older. Respect my wishes?" She said, "Respect my wishes, Tommy?"

I slid down the metal bars, and sat with my back to her. "Tell me you love me?"

"You know I love you," she said.

"Tell me the right way," I said.

"I love you," she said,

"Not like that, Rynn." She knew what I wanted.

"Shwei, ni inyee," she said, "Teetick, inyee presana." That translated to, "I love you. You know this."

She walked up to the bars, and I slid my hands through the bars. I grabbed her hands, and said, "Shwei, ni inyee. Volaskia." That translated to "I love you. Always."

"When the change of guard comes, you must go, Tommy," she said, "We already look suspicious."

"I know. Some people know about us," I said, "They won't tell, but ..."

"I don't want you to worry about me," she said.

I laughed. "I've worried about you from the first time I saw you."

She smiled.

***The next day***

I'm not sure what Meh Yewll told Amanda earlier in the week, but I didn't have a good feeling about it because she called Nolan into her office. He had a somber look on his face, and I was sure it was going to be a nasty meeting. I didn't feel well for a couple of reasons: Meh Yewll's willingness to kill a kid and Rynn's whereabouts. She kept me in the dark about her intentions, and that was okay. She wanted to protect me, but I didn't know if she was okay, and all I could think about was her safety. I pulled a picture of her out of my wallet, and stared at it for a long minute. It was a picture that I took of her next to Irocuz's old pond. She was wearing one of Iroza's old Spring Dresses. She was beautiful. She had a look of innocents on her face. I laughed. It was a good laugh.

"We need to go guys," Nolan said, "The Mayor isn't going to wait forever."

Irisa didn't stay in the jailhouse this time because she stated repeatedly that she wouldn't simply sit by while the men worked. So, Jeb told both of us to escort him to the Mayor's office.

"I'm tired of y'all leaving me behind," she said, "Don't make me have to say it!"

"Say what?" I said.

"Oh dear," Nolan replied.

"Girl power!" Irisa screamed.

She wedged herself between Jeb and I as we walked to Amanda's office, but she didn't have a clue about the situation. Honestly, I didn't have a full grasp of the problem until I walked into Amanda's office. She had some new leather furniture outside her office that looked so comfortable and plush that I wanted to kick off my shoes and take off my clothes, and relax in the nude. Somehow Datak Tarr supplied the town of Defiance with a lot of amenities since he became a member of the town's council. The first thing I noticed about Amanda's office was the aroma of some Irathient oils. It smelled like freshly cut grass, and made the entire room feel like spring time.

Amanda-about five-foot five inches-stood behind her desk with Meh Yewll standing beside her, and told us that the child had to die. The Doc stood a few inches taller than Amanda. She didn't say the kid had to die directly, but she used the word "cull." She said that all humanoids born without the act of conception had to be culled. I looked over at Jeb, and he didn't expect her to say anything like that by the confused expression on his face. He had a surprisingly stoic look on his face, and so did Irisa. Irisa shook her head in disagreement.

"I'm not killing a kid," Irisa snapped in an uproarious voice. She shoved a chair in front of the mayor's desk out of the way, and stood in front of Amanda's desk. "Why did I ever come to this?"

Jeb told Irisa to be quiet while he discussed this issue with the mayor in private. He pushed Irisa and me out of the room, and I didn't know what to say. I paced the lobby, and could barely stand the anxiety building inside of me. Suddenly, an image of the kid popped in my mind that felt real and urgent. I saw the kid standing in a white light, and he simply said, "Remember." Immediately, my mind went back to when I was on my trek in the Badlands to take the leap from a child into adulthood. I could smell the fresh air of the Badlands, and see the Volge warrior standing in front of me. He hovered over me with an angry scowl on his wretched face, and told me that I had a mission to protect the child.

"What the hell are you doing?" Irisa asked.

"Huh?"

"You know something, don't you?" She asked in a quizzical voice. Grabbing me by the hand, she asked, "What aren't you telling me?"

I looked her in the eyes, and said, "The terraforming has produced an anomaly."

"Huh? What do you mean?" She asked.

"There's a child claiming to be Irzu," I said in a soft voice.

She let go of my hand, and had a look of confusion on her face. "It's just a crazy person."

I smiled for a moment. "Meh Yewll doesn't think so."

She bit her nails, looked at me, and then said, "That's crazy talk, Tommy." She laughed for a moment. "Not about to kill a kid though. I know that much."

"Me either. God or not."

I wanted to ask her why she seemed so distant to me, but I didn't want to pry; I didn't want to seem pushy. I raked my fingers across the plush couch, and took a seat. It felt so comfortable when I sat down that I didn't want to get up for any reason. Irisa gave me a little grin, and then sat on my lap. She put her arms around me, and gave me a hug. I didn't expect her to be so playful, but it was enjoyable, at least for a moment.

"I thought a lot today," she said with a smile.

"'Bout what?"

"'Bout us, silly," she said with a grin on her face. "If you want to hang, date, chill...?"

"So, you're ready?" I asked.

She shook her head in an agreeable manner, and then said, "I thought about it a lot, and couldn't find any reason not to. There's Rynn, but. I mean everybody needs somebody special. Me, you, everybody."

Jeb walked out of the room, and said, "Y'all are on duty!" Irisa hopped off my lap, and Jeb had a disagreeable look on his face. He walked over to me, and said, "Keep that affectionate schtako off duty."

"Yes, sir," I said. I didn't mean any disrespect.

"Listen. I need you two to do a dangerous mission," he said with a stern look on his face.

"What's that?" Irisa asked.

"Did you tell her about the boy?" Jeb asked.

"Yeah," I said,

"Okay. I need you two to get the boy before a posse of Defiance citizens get there. We're gathering a posse this evening."

"Take him where?" I asked.

"I don't want to know," Jeb said, "But I know you got people. I don't want to know. Nobody can know."

"Okay," I said.

"And keep it professional until you're off the clock," he repeated several times. "Douche bags!"

We moved with stealthy movements through the city of Defiance, and commandeered a sturdy roller that could traverse the rough terrain, and outrun the malicious marauders. I packed it with my personal potech M-4 machine gun that Irocuz gave me when I was fourteen. I thought I was something special when he gave it to me after I killed two marauders trying to hijack another man's loot. I popped them in the chest with my po-tech pistol before they killed an innocent man trying to make a living for him and his daughter. It was funny to me how life happened so quickly in the Badlands that faces came and went at the speed of life. I remembered some, but not many. I didn't get a good look at the man I saved, but I felt good about it nonetheless. He went his way, and I kept pulling cabling out of the ark in the hopes the Indogenes would give me some good script for it. I considered the M-4 my best weapon because my father finally demonstrated a smidgen of love for me. I often thought he hated me because he wanted an Irathient boy, but Iroza didn't have the blessing of Irzu for babies. She always said that Ireena and I were the blessing, and she was happy with that. I would sit in my room and sometimes in the loft praying that Irza would make me into an Irathient boy, but that never happened. Sometimes I would pray so hard that my knees would bleed, and I thought the blood was a sign that Irzu loved me. I hated that I could never tell the story, and say, "The rifle was a representation of my father's love." My heart hurt with the way he treated me, and sometimes when I think about the good times, the bad times overshadowed it. I can't even tell the story of my first hellbug kill without mentioning that Irzu made me sleep outside in the freezing cold with no blanket or a tent on the same night. I stayed up in the loft, and covered myself in hay, and when Iroza had the chance, she brought me several blankets. I think I would have died that night without her. Her face was swollen because Irocuz beat her up, and I couldn't do anything about it. I was only eight.

Irisa grabbed a couple of jugs of water, strapped them to the car, and we took off for the Badlands. She had on her tiny shades, and wrote in her journal along the way. The terraforming had beaten the planet senseless, and nothing was the same anymore. Mountains existed where none had ever existed. The terraforming transformed much of the animal and plant life into new species, dangerous and unpredictable. Some human beings changed because of the planetary changes, and from the rumors that I heard, they live underground. Cancers were at an all time high, and the death rate was higher than any time in history.

The roller was an old, red roller with the top speed of eighty miles per hour. It was a durable machine, the kind of machine needed for the rough terrain. We packed the machine with a lot of fuel and food, and if we had to spend a stint in the Badlands, we had shelter. I programmed the vehicle's radio, and turned it to channel twelve, put in a special code, and waited for Rynn's voice. Irisa stepped away from the vehicle, and went to the bathroom in the woods. I didn't want Irisa to hear that I was in communications with her.

"Lil' Panther! Lil' Panther. This is Snow White," Rynn said.

"This is Lil' Panther. Over!" I said.

"Momma's up. Poppa's down," she said, "You're urgently needed."

"Give me a day, over," I said.

"A day? Poppa's urgent. Over," she said.

"Okay. I will be there tonight. Out."

"Out," she said.

It was imperative we beat the newly formed posse to the kid because they had every intention of killing the boy, and I couldn't let that happen. If I had to take the kid to my father's house, then I was willing to do that. His farm was approximately thirty miles from Defiance, deep into the Badlands with a large hellbug presence. It wasn't wise to traverse the area without having some tracking skills. I knew my father had fallen ill, but I didn't think he was on the verge of death. I had grown distant from Irocuz over the last few years because of the uniform, and bad childhood memories of his abuse. He hated the idea of me becoming a lawkeeper.

Jeb told me before we left that the order to kill the kid came from the Earth Republic, and that meant there was more to the story than we originally thought. I saw two Earth Republic vehicles moving at a slower rate, but in the same direction as me. I couldn't waste any time. I didn't expect the government to be involved in this situation, but if he had the powers of a god, then I understood their consternation over the child. The Earth Republic feared anything that might interrupt their ability to govern. They had more machinery to find the boy no matter where he hid, but nobody wanted to deal with the awesome power of the Volge. They were a warrior race with some of the best weapons and armament on the planet. What I didn't understand was how I was chosen to be one of the child's protectors. I thought the Volge Warrior I met in the wilderness was just a crazy guy, but now that I think back to those times, I was protecting Ireena, and trying to nurse her back to health. I had an epiphany at that very moment, and realized that I was the perfect person for the mission.

The last thing I wanted to do was kill a citizen of Defiance because of the Earth Republic. We raced through the Badlands, and it took a little over an hour to make it to the mud hut. It stood out in the middle of nowhere with two lawn chairs in the front yard.

When we approached the mud hut in the middle of nowhere, the boy and the Irathient were standing in front of their home. It was almost like they expected us. The Irathient warrior had a po-tech shotgun slung over his shoulder with a belt full of ammo. He was ready to go to war for the kid.

"We have to get you out of here," I said. The boy grabbed a small bag, threw it in back of the vehicle. "We have the Earth Republic about twenty minutes behind us."

"Let's go," he said, "We have to meet the Volge Warrior at Lake Eufala."

"You knew, didn't you?" Irisa asked. 'You knew we'd be here?"

"Just like you know things too, Irisa," he said.

The boy nodded at the Irathient warrior, and then the man set fire to the mud hut. It didn't take long for the small flat to go up in flames.


	5. Chapter 5

Disposable Gods

Chapter 5

Star sat in the back of the roller with his Irathient body guard, and remained quiet the entire trip. Irisa kept a watchful eye on the area to make sure we weren't being followed, but she showed weariness. I reached into my center console, saw a candy bar, and then handed the small boy the sweets for a snack. I calculated the trip to Eufaula lake, and it would take approximately four hours over the inhospitable terrain. When it came to the long ride, I expected Irisa to complain. She continued to be huffy with me every since I told her about my relationship with Rynn. It wasn't a fling or something that happened just once because we were in the process of being married when she called it off with me. I looked over at her for a moment, and she knew I was looking at her. She quietly acknowledged my gaze by the slight squint in her eyes, but she didn't say anything about it. She kept her head forward, even through the uncomfortable moment.

"Riraza rihurtha," I said as I looked over at Irisa. She just looked straight ahead, and I didn't say anything else. She just kept looking out the window like something was wrong, and due to my cargo, I didn't want to make a scene.

"I'm not thirsty," she said. "Rihurtha, inyee riraza!"

I pulled out my canteen of water, took a gulp, and then tried to hand the silver container to her. She just looked at it grimacing, and then spouted off mean things.

"Udiaye inyani footani rahana?" She asked. I almost laughed, but she was basically asking, "Where your mouth been?" She acted like I had been kissing women all over Defiance, and that wasn't true, but she still wasn't going to drink out of my canteen.

"Inyee na chinoc," I said with a grimace. I put the lid back on the container, and then said, "Chinoc, Irisa." Of all the things I ever said to her, I finally made her growl, and it was joyful and scary all at the same time because she had over twenty knives on her person. She looked over at me for a moment, grabbed the canteen, and smirked.

"Chinoc, Tommy," she said, and then took a drink of water.

After she drank a lot of water, she quietly leaned back in the seat, and watched the road. I didn't say much to her and she didn't say much to me for a long time. The Irathient warrior—hair wild and unkempt—smelled badly, but it was indicative of the people who roamed the Badlands. I had grown accustomed to the clean life in Defiance, but I wasn't so far removed from the Badlands that I had forgotten where I originated.

"Star, soya na inyee?" I asked. That translated to, "Are you okay?"

"Thei," he said. That translated to, "Yes." He broke the candy bar in half, and shared it with his body guard, and I thought that was admirable. "Enyee, na inyee, oot swaydaek."

I didn't know what to say to the truth so plainly stated. He simply said, "You're strong, but torn." He was referring to my heart, and he was absolutely right. "Oadi ugbe kianis," I said as I looked at Irisa.

She just said, "hmmm," and shrugged her shoulders, and then looked over at me, and said, "Your heart hurts because you have a lying problem, Tommy. If you just tell the truth, life would be so easy."

The Irathient warrior laughed, and then said, "Badabi badabi vrodica."

I laughed a little because he was right. "It truly is a mad mad world," I said with a smile. "Badabi vrodica shrelanka." That translated to, "Mad world indeed."

It had been awhile since I traveled to Oklahoma, and I hated North East Oklahoma because of the high radiation levels. Near Miami, Oklahoma nobody lived there anymore after a massive radiation leak in the area, and I tried to never head in that direction after cancer attacked my father. I hadn't been in the Muskogee area in nearly five years or something like that. The hilly terrain made traveling a headache, but I kept traversing the area, and it took nearly four hours to make it to lake Eufaula, the place where Star told me to bring him. When I parked the roller on the beach, a Volge soldier, the same one I met in my youth, paddled up to the shore on a green boat.

"Eerah es checha," Irisa said as she handed the Irathient warrior some pow jerky. "Pow es ahehi." That basically translated to, "Here is some meat. Pow is good."

"Ahiha," Star said. "Ahiha." That translated to, "Thank you." The Volge warrior stood on the boat, waited for the kid, and the Irathient warrior stood next to the child. He looked up at me with kind eyes, and said, "Go to Apostasy, Kansas to find Ireena. She's waiting for Tro Blassie Veenager."

I stood in front of the small child in a state of shock because my sister referred to me as Tro Blassie Veenager or the Black Ranger. It was a game that we played as a child, and there was no way the child could have known such a thing unless he had great gifts.

Irisa and I watched Star and the Irathient Warrior float along the lake, and then Irisa sat back on the roller, and wrote in her diary. It gave me the chance to think about things, and then I walked over to her, and sat beside her.

"I think we need to talk," I said with a heavy heart. She sat back on the roller, and her weapon fit tightly on her hip. She wore tight fitting brown pants, but they had an elastic to them so she could move freely in them.

"About what?" She asked. She looked over at me, and there wasn't an expression at all.

"Rynn," I said calmly. "We need to talk about Rynn."

"Syrit yo apia inyee hena?" Irsia asked. That was a transliteration for, "Your heart still burns for her?"

"Ni vordi presana," I said. I looked over at her, and she cried a little, and then I placed my right hand on her left knee. I looked into her beautiful, hazel eyes, and said, "Ni vordi presana, Irisa."

"Don't tell me you don't know, Tommy," she said grimacing. She placed her head between her knees for a second, and then said, "Don't spare my feelings. Just tell me the truth, Tommy. Does your heart burn for her?"

"Ni vordi presana," I said slightly raising my voice. "Viti Badabi vrodica." I stepped off the hood, and stood directly in front of her, between her legs, and she looked away. She sighed, and then gave me a scowl.

"Kawtoe, Tommy," she said with a scowl on her face, and then she said it loudly. I should have moved immediately, but I didn't sense her anger at the time. I thought she was being playful, but she was actually angry at me. She looked me directly in the eyes, and I could tell she resented me. It was written all over her face, and she had every right to be upset. "Kawtoe!"

It was obvious that I made her mad because the verb to move was "Kawtia." But when she said, "Kawtoe," it meant, "Fucking move." I moved from in front of her, and said softly, "Oshea." I don't know why I felt the need to apologize to her, and after I said, "Oshea" I wanted to take it back. I didn't really do anything wrong, at least not intentionally, but Irisa made me feel like I did. "Oshea. Rynn, Ni sudi hena kovac inyee ibra apia."

"You damn right you should have told me about her," she snapped. "How could I've known such a thing. She's wild, uncouth, and tattered, and you're the exact opposite."

I looked at her for a moment, and her words upset me because my heart did burn for Rynn, and any negative words about her pissed me off. "Nia me vadica paida Rynn," I said with a grimace. It translated exactly to, "I'm no better than Rynn." I folded my arms, and then said, "Tro Badlands crodicae Rynn," I said softly. "Tro Badlands crodicae nena. Tro Badlands crodicae inyee."

She started crying, and then said, "Tro Badlands crodicae nena." And it was true, the Badlands raised us all, and to think we could do better than what we learned in the Badlands was madness.

"Io NI radi yo oragrai Rynn?" I asked with a straight face. I basically asked, "Am I wrong for loving Rynn?"

She pushed me, and screamed, "Inyee iannaca nena! Inyee oragrai Rynn. You're a horrible person, Tommy. You fuck me, but love Rynn? How do you think that makes me feel."

"Nia swaydaek," I said softly, and that translated to, "I'm torn."

She looked over at me, and then asked, "How did you meet her?"

I leaned against the roller, and said, "I was five-years-old when I first met Rynn," I said as I sat back on the roller. "My parents and I sold hellbug meat at the market near the Votan base in Arkansas, and Rynn sometimes visited with the Shooty kids."

"You mean the rich Shooty?" She asked.

"Yeah. Iroza receives about two thousand dollars worth of script from them a month," he said. "She gave him the recipe for some of the foods on his product line."

"Wait? You were five when you met Rynn?" She asked.

"I thought she was so pretty," I said, "I referred to her as Ynn." I laughed. "She would share her candy with me." This was almost a year before the bad guys scarred her face. When those devils attacked her parents and scarred her face, I told her before she left I would find her. Mister Shooty sent her off to live with Sukar, and paid him to take care of her." I paused for a moment. "I was sixteen when I ran into her on an arkfall. The Spirit Riders charged an arkfall that my father and I worked, and we exited it as soon as we got word they were headed towards our position. My father took off, and I went to the top of the hill, but something told me to stick around."

"What happened?" Irisa asked.

"Oh. Some marauders attacked the Spirit Riders, and chased them away from the Arkfall, but a young woman was still on the inside." I paused for a moment, and then said, "They drug her out of the wreckage by her hair, and threw her to the ground. I charged down the hill with my po-tech pistol, and shot the first guy through the head. I then killed the other two men, grabbed the girl, and ran back to my roller." I sat up on the hood with Irisa, and then said, "When I saw the scar over her eye, I knew immediately she was my Ynn."

Tommy's Story With Rynn:

I thought about when Ireena and I would dress up as our favorite comic book heroes. It was right after I saved her in the Badlands. I was about fourteen, and still had my innocents. I hadn't gone on any arkfalls yet, but Irocuz had promised when I turned fourteen I would start making script stripping wiring out of fallen arks. Ireena always wanted me to put on the Long Ranger's mask, and wear my toy guns on my hip. I would pretend to save her from the bad guys, and she would call me, "Tro Blassie Veenager." That Translated to "The Black Ranger." I would run into the barn where she would hide, and with my hands on my hips, I would say, "Nia Tro Blassie Veenager." That translated to "I am The Black Ranger."

And she would pop-up from behind the stacks of hay, and scream, "Inyee na Tro Blassie Veenager." That translated to, "You are The Black Ranger." I started crying for a moment because the memory of my sister overwhelmed me.

Thinking about those days caused me to cry. I looked away from Irisa, so she wouldn't see me tearing up. "Damn! Something is in my eye."

"You want me to blow on it?" Irisa asked.

"Me," I said, "Ni soya." That translated to, "No. I'm okay."

The water was a beautiful sight, and I looked out on the moonlit water, and pretended like I was skipping rocks. I just didn't want Irisa to see me crying.

I had connections, known connections, connections that I tried to keep hidden, and if anybody knew about my connections, I would have to resign from my law-keeper's job. My connections always protected me, but they gave me that look, the kind of look that you give a person who wasn't being true to their family. Rynn was one of those connections, and she had a way of giving me that look without saying much. She would just avoid eye contact, and mumble, "You can't hide forever, Lil' Panther." She said that to me when she was locked up for killing the men who killed her parents. It tore me apart on the inside to see her in the jail, and I had no intentions of letting her go to Vegas. I handed her the keys to her handcuffs to use so she could escape on her way to Vegas, but she didn't accept them. She just look at me, and said, "My conscience is free. The men who killed my family are dead." I envied her at that very moment. She killed the men responsible for her parent's death, but I was still waiting for my chance. I thought she was the luckiest person in the world because she knew who killed her parents. She had their faces etched into her memory forever, and now they were dead, she could let it go. She never had to think about them again in her lifetime.

It was funny how people became friends in the Badlands. Enemies were ubiquitous; they were easier to find than a blade of grass. Friends, yet, were almost impossible to find. It could be done, but it wasn't easy. No Arkhunter went out looking for friends because hunting for booty was a dog-eat-dog game, and the slow hunters ended up with worthless scraps. Everybody wanted a piece of a fallen ark, and a day didn't go by where some hunter—male or female—wasn't raped or killed or killed and then raped. It was a hostile profession that put man against man, and Rynn was on the losing end in Miami, Oklahoma, one of the bloodiest Ark Falls in my memory.

The Spirit Riders rolled in on the scene in all their flair, and my father, Irocuz, ordered us out of the area. We had Ireena, and she was about twelve-years-old, and I had my own roller at the time. We kept all the booty in my roller, and I was the last out of the area. As soon as the Spirit Riders moved in on the scene, I was already up on the hill top South of the fall. I stopped for a moment, and checked on the Spirit Riders with my binoculars. Suddenly, a team of vicious bandits rolled up on the scene, and killed a few of the Spirit Riders. Most of them fled the scene, but Rynn didn't make it. She was still inside of the ark when the rest of her crew left. The bandits chased the Spirit Riders, but three stayed behind, grabbed Rynn, and threw her on the ground. At first, I wasn't going to do anything because she was able to push the first man off of her. She struck him in the face, and he flew on the ground. The third guy, however, threw her back on the ground, and ripped off her top. By the time I ran down the mountain, the bandits had Rynn undressed on the ground about to rape her. I pulled out my Potech Pistol, raised it to one of the rapist's heads, and pulled the trigger. When his brains flew all over the place, the other two rapists panicked. I shot them without thinking twice about it.

I pulled off my Jacket, and placed it around her shivering body. She hopped up off the ground, and kicked one of the guys in the head, and then I said, "Ga ee nay." That meant, "Let's go."

I raced back to my roller with Rynn right behind me, but at the time, I didn't know her name. She was a quiet lady, but about four years older than me. I handed her a bottle of water, and said, "rihurtha, eerah es." that was to say, "Here is some portable water."

She looked down at the water with a grimace, and then grabbed it. "Niya Irzu ahiha." And all that meant was "By the god Irzu, I thank you." She laughed for a second, and then said, "Skir, inyee na." She looked at me for a second, and asked, "Mir, inyee, nA?"

"Skir, Nia. " I said. She upset me because she kept saying that "I was just a boy." I guess that wasn't that upsetting until she said it again, but this time she asked, "Was I a child?" I looked at her for a moment, and said, "Wae ee ni phenic wae ee." I simply told her, "I walked the Spirit Walk." Shocked, I looked at her for a moment, noticed her scar, and said to myself, "Ynn."

She had a surprised look on her face, and then said, "Nabaktee kima," which meant "Cool" in the simplest of terms. "Rynn, Nia," which meant, "My name is Rynn."

I smiled at her, and then I said, "Tommy, Nia." I paused for a moment, looked at her whole face, and remembered the last time I saw Ynn. The scar was prominent, and I knew my Ynn sat in the seat next to me. I couldn't help but ask, "Na Inyee Ynn? Na Inyee Ynn?" I asked her was she "Ynn." I called Rynn Ynn as a child because I had a hard time saying words that started with Rs.

She looked at me with wide eyes, and cried, "Nia Ynn." and patted her chest. She said softly, "Nia Ynn."

"Niya Irzu," I said, and that translated to, "By the god Irzu."

I knew at that moment that I had her trust because Irathient women didn't give out their names so easily, at least not from what I knew about them, and now that I found my childhood friend, I felt my life was perfect. I spent my entire life thinking about her, and I felt my life was complete now. We drove for about an hour, and met up with my parents in Deering, Kansas behind an old Dairy Queen. The entire town was vacated because of the radioactive material in the area, but Irocuz insisted on a location that was easily found. I wanted to meet up near Kansas City, but Irocuz insisted on Deering.

When I drove up with Rynn, Irocuz pulled his gun on her because he didn't trust the Spirit Riders. Well, that wasn't necessarily true. Irocuz had a disdain for everybody who wasn't family. I immediately stood in front of Rynn, and said, "Rynn, nena es inka," and Irocuz put his gun away. I simple told him,"Rynn is with me." That was immediately understood that I had her complete trust, and nobody in the tribe should violate that trust. I looked over at my mother, and said, "Teetick es Ynn."

My mother, gasped. "Teetick es Ynn?"

"Teetick es Ynn, Momma," I said with joy. "Teetick es Rynn." That Translated to "This is Ynn, Momma. This is Rynn."

Irocuz and I went through all the booty, and estimated that we had nearly ten thousand dollars worth of material. Most of our money came from rare metals that we looted from the wiring in the ship. The Indogenes paid a pretty penny for those metals, so Irocuz made sure that he supplied them with as much of it as possible. When we gathered all the loot back in my vehicle, Irocuz raised his hands in the air, and said, "Izru ahiah."

I looked at him for a second, and said, "Thank Irzu, indeed."

Rynn rode with me back to our home, and the drive was a little over three hours. The terrain was rough, and she wasn't the most outspoken passenger. She fell asleep for the first hour, and then sat quietly for a moment. She wore one of my old shirts that I had stuffed in the backseat in case I needed an extra pair of clothes. It was a black shirt with Trail Blazers written across the back. It fit her perfectly. She still had on my jacket because the night air had a bite to it. I had the heater turned on low, but with my jacket, Rynn seemed to be comfortable.

She said to me in a soft voice, "Yanna tu tu ni dina. Zushone, inyee na." She smiled. She simply said, "I made a mistake. You are a man."

I don't know why that made me feel good, but it was my actions that made her see past my youthfulness, and see the man that I knew I was. When Iraths from other tribes could see the righteousness of the people of another tribe, then that was respect shown to the entire house. I smiled at her, and said, "Ahiha."

Rynn stayed with us for about a month, and then we located the Spirit Riders on the outskirts of Defiance. We had been listening to a radio broadcast for days, and then we heard Rynn's father come across the radio about his missing daughter. He was torn up inside over her, and then Irocuz sent him a secure message that I would bring Rynn to him. Honestly, the month that Rynn spent with us, went by too fast.

Ireena had just turned twelve-years-old, and she wanted to be around Rynn all day every day. Rynn was one of the first women outside of Momma that she liked. She remembered her birth mother, but she didn't have deep memories of her. She asked me one day why her mother gave her up so easily, and I assured her it didn't happen that way. I didn't want her to ever think anybody would ever give up a child so easily, but when Iraths caught the pox, it was normally fatal. I simply said to her, "Niya Irzu inyee indinee." All I said was, "By Irzu you live." It was one of those subjects where it was important to explain things in such a manner as not to denigrate the ways of the Iratheint people.

Rynn's presence was good for Ireena because she had an opportunity to see how a tribal, Irathinet woman lived. Every day Rynn helped prepare the meals, danced, and prayed to Irzu. Iroza benefited from Rynn's presence because she helped with all the womanly activities, and the food was plentiful. Iroza taught Rynn how to make hell-bug steaks, hell-bug jerky, and several other dishes with hell-bug meat.

I sat on the roof of our old farm house, and watched Rynn and Ireena playing next to the old pond. They looked like sisters. Rynn sat Ireena down on the bench next to the pond, and braided her hair in traditional Irathient fashion. I climbed down off the house, and then sat Rynn down on the bench. Ireena went into the house because she was worn out for the day. I walked behind Rynn, and asked, "Inyani yuta, trania ni mixa?"

"You want to braid my hair?" She asked. She looked back at me for a moment, and said, "Soya." Her eyes lit up, and I began to neatly braid her hair. The braids went down to the middle of her back, and she was beautiful.

"Propai inyani yuta es," I said. That translated to "Your hair is beautiful."

"Yuta, inyee forya?" She asked. That translated to "You like my hair?"

"Inyani yuta, forya ni isani," I said. That translated to "I like your hair a lot."

She smiled sheepishly. "Nena ni udia inyee forya." She paused for a moment, and turned to look at me. "Yana tu tu oadi!" That translated to "I think you like me." And then she thought about what she said for a second, and replied, "I'm sorry."

"Yoqua? Rynn, prapai inyee na," I said. That translated into, "For what? You are beautiful." I placed my hands gently on either side of her cheeks, and said, "Ya, thezidu, inyee ni udia. Ya, thlunya, inyee ni udia." That translated to "I think of you all day. I think of you all night." I looked her into her beautiful eyes, and said, "Thei. inyee nia udia voadi." That translated into, "Yes. I'm thinking of you right now."

She abruptly stood to her feet, and said in a strong voice, "Tommy, vodi! Ugbe, vordi kiani." That translated to "Stop, Tommy. Don't break my heart or don't hurt my heart."

"Yana tu tu oadi. Oadi syrit es enyee," I said. That translated to "I'm sorry. My passion is strong."

Rynn stood to her feet, and walked around to my side of the bench. She patted the back of the bench, and then said, "Tata." Some of the Irathients pronounced the second "T" with a "D" sound, but it didn't matter. She was telling me to have a seat, but I didn't want to sit down immediately.

"Miat?" I asked. I knew she wanted me to sit down so she could braid my hair, but I wanted her to say it again because after I confessed how I felt, a braiding was no longer a simple hair braiding. When a viable Irathient woman braided the hair of a viable man who had confessed his intimate feelings, a hair braiding was the next step to romance. By asking her "What?" She had to repeat herself in a stronger voice, and that cemented her intentions. "Tata," was a slang word for to sit, but "Taita," was the formal saying.

"Taita," she said.

"Soya," I said with a smile. I sat on the bench, and Rynn braided my hair. I had watched her fight the guys who tried to rape her, and her hands were strong and furious. Now she was so gentle with how she braided my hair, and she was all I could think about for the moment. She started at the front of my head, and worked backwards. The braids were tight, but not too tight.

"Chodi nena? Fefi nena vo inyee?" She asked. It translated to "Tell me? Do you want me?" She continued to braid my hair for a second, and then she paused. "Na inyee nay prafee sheshe?" That translated to "Are you going to say something?"

"Thei," I said. That meant, "Yes." She placed her hands on my shoulders. "Nia inyani zushone." That translated to "I am your man."

"Aizob," she said. That translated to "Done." She climbed over the bench, and sat beside me, and we watched the sun set on the pond. It was a nice night, a quiet night, and we sat as close as possible on that green bench. "Miri, ni shopa," she said with a sad voice. "Sukar, apti eelledia." That translated into, "I feel sad because Sukar, her father, may not approve of the relationship."

"Comick nayno?" I said. That translated to "Why not?"

She looked at me for a second, and then looked down at her hands, "Irath, inyee nayno." That translated to "You're not an Irathient."

"Skragi," I said. I didn't like cursing in front of Rynn, but I was taught that the terraform world was a new world, and it was no need to bring yesterday's prejudices into it.

"Tommy! Inyee Ima inka," she said, "Ni forya inyee." That translated to "Tommy! I'm with you. I like you."

I gently slid my right hand down her arm, and held it. It was warm and nice, and she smiled at me for a moment. I laughed when I thought about Rynn. She was my first in everything with a woman. She was that girl that I loved so hard that I thought I was going to die when she canceled the wedding.

When I moved to Defiance, I went there because of Rynn. Irocuz told me that if I had any intentions of putting on the deputy law-keeper's uniform that I should forget about having a relationship with Rynn, and he didn't say it in a nice way. This was the first year after the rustlers kidnapped Ireena, and we searched the land for her for a whole year. I told Irocuz that finding a job in law enforcement would give me an opportunity to find out who kidnapped our beloved family member, but he told me I had gone, "Batshit crazy!" So, I was with Rynn for two full years, and then at the age of nineteen, I put on the Lawkeeper's uniform, and for some strange reason, I thought Rynn would appreciate that. It was weird because I thought I knew more than Irocuz, and I think back to that tumultuous time, I realize I might have been plain crazy. I thought Rynn and I would live in a quaint little cottage in Defiance, raise a couple of kids, and grow old together like Iroza and Irocuz.

Iroza was the only Irath who didn't reject me. She said, "Skir, inyee na oadi." That translated to "You are my boy," and that was a common saying that Irathient mothers said to their male children. This meant that she would always have my back.

Irocuz didn't see things the same. He didn't say I wasn't his son, but he didn't have to. He raised me from the time that I was four years old, and he only talked to me in the Irathient tongue. The only time he ever used English was with the scum he came across on ark-runs, and it was the crudest form of English possible. But when we came home after a run, it was the Irathient language only. So, when I donned the Lawkeeper's uniform, Irocuz said, "You're not allowed to speak my tongue anymore." In my mind, this was tantamount to saying, "You're not family anymore." It hurt so badly that I cried all the way to Defiance. My eyes were swollen to the point that I couldn't see straight. But when Rynn said to me, "I can't. I can't be with you if you're going to wear that," I almost became suicidal. The girl that I called my first at everything, that showed me her lady parts, the girl that let me play with her lady parts, the girl that I loved so much, the girl that I thought would love me no matter what, pushed me out of her life over the Lawkeeper's uniform.

Rynn would come to town with her tribe, sell trinkets, and different types of foods in the Bazaar. I would walk past, buy a few trinkets, but Rynn would treat me like we never rolled in the sheets. It was so painful to me that I lost all hope that we'd rekindle our relationship. When she headed to the latrine area on the south side of Defiance, I asked, "Comick na inyee yanning teetick?" That translated into "Why are you doing this?"

"I told you why," she said in plain English.

"Irathient, tuni," I said. That translated to "Speak Irathient."

She looked at me for a moment, and said, 'NO! Now let me pass, Tommy."

I let her pass, and then I said, "Inyee kiani nena."

"I hurt you? You hurt me, Tommy. You don't think I go to bed every night crying. I spent two years waiting for the day that we jumped the broomstick, and then you put on that disgusting uniform." She grimaced at me for a second, and said, "This was the only thing that I couldn't look past." She started crying, and I tried to hold her, but she wiggled away from him. "I don't need your comfort. Just go, Tommy."

I backed away from her, and my heart hurt so badly that I could barely stand. "Inyee vitti oadi ugbe."

"I broke your heart?" She asked, "You wrecked my soul, Tommy."

End of Story

I walked over to Irisa as she sat on the car, and had her head between her legs. Her body shuttered as she sniffled, and then I said, "Nia vittan." That translated to, "I'm broken."Ni udae Ni zodica volaskia tiria Rynn fofo ita." I simply said, "I thought I would always marry Rynn since six."

"Voadi?" She asked. That translated to, "Now?"

I said in a brittle voice, "Ni vordi presana." I placed my hands on her knee, and then said, "Ni hena folli oadi woweia." That translated to, "I don't know. I have to find my sister."

"If she's in Kansas, then we can find your sister, Tommy," she said with a smile. "But you've had more than enough time to decide on what you want to do," she placed her hands on his face, and then said, "I'm here. I'm with you now! You don't have to chase me or take your uniform off for me." She hugged him, and said, "Ni freyada inyee forya teetick." That translated to, "I accept you like this."

Suddenly, three clicks happened on the radio, and I ran over to the driver seat, grabbed the mike, and said, "Soya, Rynn." That translated to, "Okay, Rynn."

I heard her over the radio in a brittle voice, and she said, "It's your father. He's dying."

"Miat?" I asked. That translated to, "What?"

"It's the cancer," she said. "It's ravished his body."

"Nia iddie oadi kordi," I said. That translated to, "I'm on my way."

I raced through the darkness of the Badland to make it back home, and the trek was long for a night drive. The stuffiness of the roller didn't seem to bother Irisa, and I felt good about that. She did talk more on the way to my parents home than she talked to lake Eufaula. Even though I felt a great deal of frustration, it wasn't from Irisa smacking on pow jerky, and asking questions about my sister.

"What happened to Ireena?" She asked.

"Some marauders attacked us. Knocked me out, and kidnapped my sister," he said. "When I awoke, Rynn was taking care of the knot on my head, and told me what happened." I paused for a moment as a tear rolled down my face. "I tried to get out of bed, but Rynn wouldn't let me. I wanted to go after her, but Irocuz already took off. He spent nearly two weeks wandering the Badlands, but didn't find her."

She sighed. "Was I so standoffish that you couldn't share this?" She asked. "Nolan and I have bounced around for as long as I can remember." She paused, and chewed on her pow jerky. Laughed a little, and then said, "Gawd, Tommy. I'd've stayed for you. If I thought you loved me."

The entire trip took almost three hours, and Irisa cried on and off the whole way there. I tried to comfort her, but she said that it was a pain she'd have to work through on her own. I don't know why I wasn't able to anticipate that she would cry like she did, but Irisa usually played it tough, and kept her feelings hidden. She also said that I had better come correct with her because she didn't want to open herself up to being hurt.

It was a little after nine o'clock in the evening when we made it to my parent's farm, and Rynn was on the front porch waiting for us. She was puffing on a tribal pipe that had a nice scent.

"Eseneziri, Tishinka," Rynn said, "You too, Tommy." Tommy looked at Rynn for a second because she immediately disrespected him by speaking English. She greeted Irsia in the tribal tongue, but looked at him as an outsider. It was crazy because she said that Irisa was raised by Nolan, and just didn't know any better, but since I was raised with Iraths, I should have known better than to wear their uniform.

"Irocuz, es yanning ahehi?" I asked. That translated into "Is Irocuz doing well?"

"No. He's very sick," Rynn said, "You need to see him now."

I walked into the house where I lived most of my life, and not much had changed. Iroza gave me a hug as soon as I walked into the house, and asked me how I was doing. She had a rough year because Irocuz had become stricken with cancer. It might have been because of radiation exposure, but I wasn't sure. His doctor gave him less than six months to live, and I had worried that I wouldn't have an opportunity to return home to see him before he died. It wasn't because Nolan wouldn't have given me time off from work, but Irocuz hated me in the Law-keeper's uniform. As long as I worked in law enforcement, he didn't want anything to do with me.

"Lil' Panther, gayadie eerah?" Irocuz asked. That translated to "Come here?"

I walked into his room, and he had a picture of Rynn, Ireena, and me in a photo posing. I walked up to his bed, and I thought I would never see a day when Irocuz wasn't strong, when he wasn't standing on his feet directing us to the next ark-fall. "Papi, eseneziri."

"Sisi vordi," he said, "Ireena, inyee follia." That translated to "Don't cry for me. Find my daughter, Ireena." He grabbed my hands, and said, "Shwei, ni inyee. Unee." I stood by his bed, and I did everything in my power not to cry. He asked me not to cry, so I wanted to obey his wishes. But for my entire life, I wanted my father to tell me he loved me, but he never did. I did everything within my power to be a good son, and in the end, he stopped speaking to me in our tribal language over the profession I chose. But as I stood by his bed, he told me that he loved me, and then he said, "Shwei, inyee na ahehi. Zushone, vadica inyee dina nena." The grip he had on my hand faded, and he passed with me standing by his bed. His last words to me when translated to English were "Son, you are good. You made me a better man." I cried so loudly and was in so much pain that I didn't realize my hurt echoed throughout the house. Rynn ran into the room, and when she saw me crying over my father, she ran over to me, and held me. She cried over me as I cried over my father, and Irisa walked over to me, and placed her hands on my head.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

I climbed up in the old loft over the barnhouse, and laid on my old bed, the one away from the main house. It gave me time to think about my life. Where did I go wrong? I smiled for a moment because I knew what happened. At one time, not too long ago, I thought I had the entire world at my fingertips, but I was disillusioned by the kidnapping of my sister. Some of my best memories were of Rynn making hellbug, meat pies with Momma and Ireena in the old kitchen, and gazing over at me with her soft smile, and whispering, "I love you, Little Panther." Rynn was by my side for over two years, and I didn't have any doubts about our lives together. She'd sit back on the front porch, knit, and talk about life in the Badlands. It was the best time of my life, even though the whereabouts of my sister haunted every memory.

I walked over to one of the bannisters, an old wooden pole with my name and Rynn's name etched into it surrounded by a heart. She and I carved it together after we sat by the pond, and braided each other's hair. The childhood confession of love for her was suspected to last forever, at least by me. I was only sixteen when we wrote that we'd love each other forever. I couldn't help but laugh as I brushed away the dirt from around the pole because I believed we'd be together until death. It's funny how everything seemed so surreal about that time. When I told Irocuz that Rynn would be my wife, he scoffed. The look on his face was so visceral that I thought he was choking. Ireena sat next to Rynn, and her hair was braided in the old, Irathient style. Momma sat to my right and Irocuz to my left. Rynn sat next to me, and I could feel the warmth of her body.

Four years earlier...

"Irocuz," I said in a low tone. "Rynn, Ni oragra." I turned to Rynn, held her hand, and said, "Oadi ugbe medea yo inyee." She placed her hand over her chest, and smiled. That translated to, "My heart burns for you." I braided Rynn's hair the night before in perfect braids, and I started from the front, braided backwards, and because of the oil in her hair, it looked a dark, mango color. Her beauty shined. She had been with us several weeks already, and she wore one of Iroza's old dresses that we found while scavenging around the countryside. I thought her face was beautiful and handsome, and the flaw on the left side of her face told a story of pain and suffering, but it didn't make her. It didn't define her. When I looked at her, I saw her wholly, the inner and the outer parts of her person, and her aura glowed like the royal family's aura.

"Uado, oadi ugbe medea yo inyee, Tommy," she said. That translated to, "And my heart burns for you."

"Apia fooagi es deaka!" Irocuz exclaimed. I looked at him for a moment, and couldn't believe what he said. He said, "Her face is horrible." I didn't care that the spirits had already soaked into his liver, and because of his hurtful words, I saw myself killing him. Rynn wasn't some girl that I saved from some evil marauders, but she was the girl that I loved since childhood. I remembered when she attended my sixth birthday party, and kissed me on the cheek when she left. It was when we lived south of here on the outskirts of a Votan base in Arkansas. I looked at Rynn in the hopes his words didn't sting her, and my heart hurt so badly when the tears swelled in her eyes. The rage roared in my heart, and then I attacked Irocuz. In all the years that he abused my Momma, I never attacked him with so much rage. I've always stood between him and Iroza, but this was the first time that I struck him. It felt like I developed a quick case of tunnel visions because for a moment, all I could see was Irocuz. As I continued my aggression towards my Father, I looked up, and saw Ireena run to her bedroom in tears. I struck Irocuz in the face several more times, and then when he caught his balance, he knocked me across the room. Rynn ran out the house.

"Rynn!" I screamed, but she kept running away from the house. I turned to Irocuz, looked at him for a moment, and then said, "Ni droadia inyee." My tone was a bitter tone, and I emphasized each word, and as he stood on the other side of the table with blood dripping off his bottom lip, I said it again. "Ni droadia inye inka ya ugbe." That translated to, 'I hate you. I hate you with all my heart."

Iroza stood up quickly, and said, "Irocuz! Inyee dina soya. Tommy oragras Rynn. Viti sa poedi oragrey. " That translated to, "Irocuz, you make right. Tommy loves Rynn. It's an old love."

I ran out the house, and Rynn had run on the other side of the pond, and she paced back and forth bleating so loudly. Her cries hurt my heart, but I couldn't worry about my feelings. I only wanted to make her happy. I only wanted to make her smile. I fell to my knees in front of her, and held her around the waist. I placed my head against her stomach, and said. "Wai trania nay vadrey!" That translated to, "We can go away!"

She placed her hands on my cheeks, guided me up to her face, and said, "Peeia bovi fooagi," she said softly. "Viti piyadi." That translated to, "Look at my face. It's ugly."

I looked at her for a moment, and traced the scar over her left eye, and said, "Ni koso vitai inyee." I paused for a moment, and smiled at her. "Inyee na zainye ni oragra." That translated to, "I only see you. You are the girl I love." I gently held her hands, and said, "Inyee na prapai." That translated to, "You're beautiful."

"Nia prapai?" She asked. With a half smile, she looked down at the ground, and she hand a tenuous hold of my left hand. "Ni oragra fi shetawi zushone." That translated to, "I'm beautiful? I love a blind man." She laughed sheepishly, and covered her mouth with her right hand.

End of flashback

I took off my boots, and my feet had a slight stale odor to them. It was time to invest in some anti-fungal foot medicine, but a lot of stuff had happened in Defiance over the last few months that caused me to ignore my feet hygiene. I sat in the loft with my shoes off, my shirt unbutton, and looking over the map of Kansas. I was so alone, and I wanted Rynn to visit me in the loft so badly that it burned. She told me our old room in the house suited her needs, and I agreed like a dummy. When she first came to the ranch, the loft was our romantic getaway. We spent a large portion of our time making love under the old roof, and confessing our undying love for each other. I wanted her to meander her way up to the loft, and it didn't have to be anything sexual, but I just wanted her company. I wanted her to think like i thought, and come sleep in my bed because the thought of being apart while in the same place would be a horrid thought. When I laid my head on my pillow, I turned over against the wall, and suddenly I felt a warm body crawl in bed with me, and it was Rynn.

"Trania wai cheppa eerah, uado snea shidda?" She asked. That translated to, "Can we lay here, and be family?"

"Thei," I said with a smile. "Nia udai ibra tattitata."

"What are you saying, Tommy?" She asked. "You're thinking about your uniform, but what about it?"

"Ni fefi inyee oadi earaeinka," I said. That translated to, "I need you in my life."

"Ni ubia orzi inye obitootia," she said. That translated to, "I didn't ask you to choose."

"I want a family," I said, "I want a family with you." She lay back on the bed, and looked directly at the ceiling, and in some ways, she had an uncomfortable look on her face. Her emerald eyes-at least under the dim light-sparkled, and I could tell she had already given me a long thought.

"Tommy, you love being a lawkeeper," she said softly.

"My law keeping job isn't fulfilling if I don't have you," I said with a grimace. "Or are you saying you'd marry me if I stay a lawkeeper?"

"Let's just take some time to discuss it," she said with a stern look on her face. "I know you've been intimate with Irisa." She paused for a moment, and placed her left hand on my forehead. "You have needs and desires that you must satisfy, and I don't blame you for that." She sat up for a moment and slid backwards until she had the support of the headboard. "You've tasted the essence of another woman, and it's my own fault. I didn't expect to stay in your head for this long after I told you it was over."

"You never had our marriage nullified," I said softly. "I've never requested it either. Under your tribe, we're married. Are we not?" I asked.

"It's true, but I haven't lived up to the definition of a wife," she said calmly. "Maybe my feelings had to do with my parent's killers roaming free, and the law keepers never doing anything about it." She turned to me, and then said, "They're dead now. I'm not angry anymore," she said, "I don't mind the uniform."

"So, you will move back to Defiance?" I asked.

"Things are complicated now," she pulled her legs up to her chest. "Irisa loves you, and you love her." She paused for a moment, and then asked, "You will always wander to her bed, as I will always wander to yours." She paused. "I've talked to Irisa, and she's in agreement that we must talk about boundaries between us."

I paused for a moment because I knew what she meant, and in the Irathient culture, it was customary to have more than one paramour, as long as the needs of all were met. I looked over at Rynn as she sat with her head on her knees, and said, "We can discuss this after we find my sister."

"You better check on Irisa," she said.

I ran down the stairs of the old barn house, and Irisa lay on top of the roller, gazing up at the stars, and whistling some Old World tune. The muggy air mixed with the heat caused her to remove her top. I walked up to the vehicle, and she lay on the roof, and I don't know why I tickled her, but I did. I stuck my face into her tummy, and started tickling her with my lips, and she twisted and turned, laughed and begged me to stop, and in that moment, I realized Rynn was right about us: I loved both of them. I don't know why Irocuz never took another woman, but he didn't. My whole life he only had drunken eyes for Iroza, and if it weren't for his alcoholism, we would've had the perfect family.

"When we return from Kansas, we need to talk," I said, "All of us."

"I begged you to be honest, Tommy," she said with a grimace. "All you had to do was tell me the truth, and I'd never given you my heart."

"Yes you did," he said. "I thought I could move past Rynn, but I couldn't. I tried to move on by bringing you into my life, but now I'm in love with both of you, but I don't want it to be fruitless." I paused for a moment, and then said, "Or hedonistic."

"I don't know, Tommy," she said softly. "How is this different than Nolan?"

'Because it's not about sex," I said. I hopped on the roller, and said, "It's not about getting wasted in some seedy bar, and sleeping with the first woman that winks at me." I wiped the sweat off my face, and then said, "It's about building a life together, a family, and stuff. It's about being a family, Irisa."

"I need time to think about things," she said.

"It's crazy how the thought of letting you go pains me," I said. "I need you to choose me." I held her by the hands, and then said, "Rynns already asleep in the loft. Come sleep upstairs with us."

She paused for a moment, and then asked, "Just sleep?"

"Yes, Irisa. No monkey business."

The next morning I braided the ladies hair, and it was in the ritualistic style after the death of the family's patriarch. I braided Rynn's hair first, and I did it with perfect precision. It was the first time I braided her hair in a long time where it meant something to her. The curvature of her head felt perfect to my touch, and with each braid, she looked more traditional and beautiful. I looked at Irisa through her reflection in the mirror, and she looked somewhat bewildered.

"What's wrong, Irisa?" I asked calmly.

She smirked. "You're braiding her hair in the Irathient tradition," she said, "You know more about tradition than I."

Rynn laughed. "Iroza and Irocuz raised him since four," she said, "He's taken the Spirit Walk."

"So, what does this all mean?" Irisa asked. "If Tommy braids my hair in this fashion, it means…"

"That you accept him intimately," she said, "You're saying you'll let him into your life on an intimate level."

"Oh," she said with a straight face.

"What do you want?" Rynn asked. She looked at Irisa through the reflection in the mirror. "If you're not ready for this kind of intimate contact…"

"I'm ready," she said with a smile.

I sat Irisa down in the chair, and Rynn lay back on the bed in the supine position. Calmly, I gently massaged her shoulders, and she relaxed, smiled, and then placed her hands on mine. First, I brushed her hair, and then started braiding her hair on the left side. I wanted each braid to be perfect because it was how she'd know I cared for her a great deal. I never messed up Rynn's hair, and she knew it. I watched her watch me in the mirror with every twist, and I could tell that she had affection for me. It was written in her eyes, and I had hoped she could tell the same.

After I finished with Irisa's hair, Rynn sat up on the bed, and then walked over to us.

"That's perfect," she said with a smile. "Irisa is so beautiful."

"Both of you are angels in my eyes," I said with a smile. "Your hair is perfect."

I wore Irocuz's golden tribal ring, and it fit perfectly. My mother prepared my father for burial, and I was working with Rynn and Irisa to perfect the plan to get Ireena out of Apostasy safely. The women looked humble and meek, and it was the first time that I had seen Irisa shine so brightly. Her face was alive, and she didn't come across as withdrawn like she did in Defiance. She seemed at home with her kind, and it felt good not seeing her struggling between two worlds: Irathient and human.

Rynn's prowess shined through in her attention to detail about the possible location of Ireena; she was more than just a tracker: she knew how to manipulate wild, mutant species of animals, handle different weapons, and work a charge blade. Her specialty was a bow staff and potech weapons. She wasn't a woman to be underestimated, and I saw that in her for years, so I wasn't surprised when she killed the men who killed her parents with hell-bug pheromones. I think I have to go in depth about Rynn for a couple of reason: first reason, I love her; second reason, her tenacity.

Right before I escorted Rynn to the bus on the way to Vegas, I tried to slip her the keys to the cuffs one more time so she could escape given the first opportunity. Seeing her in chains for something that I would do, giving her circumstances, hurt me more than it hurt her. I didn't see any benefit in sending her to the Vegas Criminal Facility, and because justice only preyed on the poor, Rynn's revenge was the most visceral justice that us commoners would ever see. Everybody had left out of the jail-house, and I was with Rynn all by myself. I stared at her for a long time. I opened up her cage for a moment, walked inside, and kissed her. She didn't resist. I stuck my handcuff key into Rynn's bra, but she removed it immediately, threw it on the ground, and whispered to me, "Chinoc Tommy. Oadi earaeinka, ga wa." That translated to "Stupid Tommy. It's my life, so get out." That's a transliteration of what she said, but that was the meaning I understood. I picked up the key, closed the door, and a tear rolled down my face. Rynn said with a serious look on her face, "Sisi vordi yo nena. Nia soya." That translated to "Don't cry for me. I'm okay."

I looked at her for a moment through the bars, and she reached out to me. She placed her hands on my shoulders, and I said, "Soya, nia nayo. Sayo. Kiani nia." That translated to "I am not okay. Okay? I am hurting."

"Ni presana," (I know) she said, "Oshea." (Sorry) She placed her right hand over her heart. "Eerah, inyee ni shopa." That translated to "I feel you in my heart." Even though she didn't say the word for heart, "Ugbe" she placed her hand on her chest signifying where her pain was. "Inyee ni shwei, oot tattitata ni drodi." That translated to "I love you, but I hate the uniform." She used the uniform to mean me being a deputy law-keeper, and not the uniform itself. That was how much she hated the job of the law-keeper because she rarely said those words. My father, Irocuz, was the same way, and it had to do with a class system that the Votans used. Rynn's parents were of an upper class system, a class of scientists, but after her parents were murdered, she was raised in one of the lowest class systems.

Rynn had a tenacity that went beyond anything I had ever experienced, and I think that was the reason she loved me, but couldn't be with me. I thought a thousand times about giving up my law-keeper's job, but in a way, it was my identity. Instead of Rynn moving on with her life, she didn't up and leave, and over the last year or so, she never indicated to me that she didn't love me. When I fought Sukar, Rynn told me that I was crazy, and that I needed a lot more training with the staff. I spent months with the Spirit Riders, and learned their fighting techniques. Rynn would massage my sore spots, and I would feel regenerated by the next day, and then she would practice with me all day. When Sukar gave me my first beat down, Rynn didn't give up on me. He told me that my skills were on the level of a child, and he taunted me the whole time. Needless to say, when Sukar tried to strike me when I was down on the ground, Rynn blocked his staff. "Sukar! Vordi! " (Sukar! Don't!) The entire crowd made a gasping sound.

"Inyee na nayno vevadi," Sukar said, "Vordi gayadie bodi itiu inyee trania volla stinicka sa Irath." He looked at me, and in disgust, and the entire tribe turned their backs on me. It was probably the worst day of my life because I thought I had skills until that day. I was only seventeen at the time, but I was a man in their culture. Rynn never turned her back on me, and she never failed to look me in the eyes.

"Sheetee cronitiki vadica inyee sho vo," she said. That translated to "The next time you will do better."

She didn't say that I would beat Sukar, but she implied that I would do better. As far as what Sukar had said to me, I'm not sure if I could fight like an Irath, and at first, I thought that was my mistake. Sukar said to me on several occasions after the first fight, "Vordi gayadie bodi itiu inyee trania volla stinicka sa Irath." He kept telling me to fight like an Irath, and Rynn eventually told him to stop it.

Rynn had me doing friendly combative sessions with all the young men and women in her tribe, and I studied all their moves. I was growing faster and better every day, and I felt my chances of beating Sukar were improving every day. After two months of vigorous training, I fought him for the second time. He knelt on the fighting grounds, and looked away from the center of the circle into the crowd of Iraths. I had trained so hard that I went into the circle without my eyes on the prize. That might seem crazy, but the albatross in front of me was so large that I lost focus of Rynn. Sukar became my sole focus, and my focus should have been on Rynn, but somehow I lost that focus on a visceral level.

Sukar turned, attacked, and nearly took me off my feet, but after the first attack, I had him off balance for the first twenty minutes of the fight. I was so exhausted, and that was when I realized Sukar was playing chess while I was playing checkers. The whole time I was trying to beat the bigger opponent with my youth, and he was fighting like a seasoned warrior: waiting for my fatigue to show. At the thirty-minute mark, I had no energy left. He beat me by attrition, and that was the second lesson I learned.

It was my utter patience that gave me the balance I needed to defeat Sukar on the third try. Sukar had been satisfied with my performance on the second try, but Rynn and I both rescinded that pass. He had given his permission, but Rynn felt my performance wasn't good enough for the Chief's daughter. Until this day, I couldn't quite put my finger on why she talked me into rescinding the pass, and I guess it didn't matter. I knew Rynn was a perfectionist, and she pushed me to do better. So, after a total of six months of training, and Irocuz sent word that it was time for my return a week before the last match, I felt dismayed. I appealed to his Irathient sensibility about the situation, and told him as a warrior fighting for a warrior princess that I needed one more try. Iroza and Ireena asked me to return, but I told them no too. I wasn't going to come home until I fought Sukar one more time, and won.

This time I wore the colors of the House of Irocuz, and that was orange and black. Rynn braided my hair in the warrior style, and that was braided tightly from front to back. The top half of my staff was black and the bottom half of the staff was orange. Rynn had spent the last two weeks making it for me. The top half of the staff had my name written long ways on it and the bottom half had Rynn's name written the same. The magic of this special made staff was it broke apart by pressing a button in the center, and one weapon became two.

When I stepped into the ring with Sukar, the first thing he said was "Yana, inyee dina." That made me nervous because he was saying I made a mistake, and I was pretty sure he was talking about rescinding the first pass. As I assumed my fighting stance, Sukar said, "Kukaee maudiaye." That translated to "No more mercy," and that must have meant he showed mercy the last time.

When the dong sounded, Sukar came at me full charge, and that was unexpected. Our staffs met, and we must have stricken staff to staff fifty times before I struck him in the ribs. He stumbled backwards, and then I kicked him in the face, and he flew into the dirt. Sukar was a dirty fighter. He threw dirt in my face, but I turned my head. I rolled to the side as he lunged forward. I flipped backwards, and then separated my staff. Sukar wasn't prepared for me coming at him with two smaller staffs, and I was able to trip him up. He lunged at me with a front kick, and I flipped him on his back by taking out his planted leg. He wasn't able to continue with the match because he pulled a muscle in his lower back. The entire fight lasted ten minutes, and I defeated Sukar for the one and only time.

Rynn returned with me to my parent's farm, and Iroza was upset with the amount of time that I had stayed away. It's nothing more demeaning than having an Irathient Momma berating her child because they dealt in guilt trips all the time, and that was the reason I didn't have the right reaction when she said, "Irocuz es morganai." That translated to "Irocuz is dying."

I paused for a moment, and smiled. "Soya." (Okay)

Rynn walked beside me, held my hand, and said, "Mapi es sinadici." That translated to "Momma is serious."

"Mapi? Papi udiaye es?" That translated to "Momma? Where's daddy?" I ran into the house, and he was lying in bed.

Ireena sat beside the bed, and told me to be quiet, "Papi es lacitai." That translated to father is resting." She grabbed me by the hand, and walked me out of the room. "Papi, rinnra fefia rireeza," she said. This translated to "Father wants rainwater to drink." She and I walked to the well, and as I was reaching for the bucket, I heard a ruckus. I stood up, and saw three marauders grab Ireena, and I didn't have my potech weapon with me. There was a marauder behind me that I didn't see, and he struck me in the head. As I was passing out, I thought I heard one of the marauders scream, "This is for Miami."

When I awoke, Rynn was standing over me crying, and when I tried to stand to my feet, I fell down again. For four days, I was resting in my bed, and when I awoke, I asked about my sister. Rynn told me that she wasn't able to track the men who stole her, but they were headed west. Papi traveled the Badlands, but returned empty handed, and he was growing sicker every day. With my father growing sicker and money at an all time low, it was hard to keep up with searching for my sister, and that was when I got the idea to become a law enforcement officer.

There was a small town of about two hundred people near Kansas City called Apostasy, and Rynn had received a message that it was an enclave of sex bars that trafficked in Irathient girls. Many of the women who worked in the bar were under the age of sixteen. I hadn't heard anything about the place, but Irisa had heard of it.

"Nolan warned me of this place," she said, "We never traveled anywhere near it."

She explained what she heard about the place, and they were notorious for kidnapping Irathient girls who lived on the plains. According to Irisa, the bars dealing in the sex trade had the protection of the courts and law enforcement agencies. It disgusted me when I heard her talking about that. The women who worked the Needwant did so under their own volition. The first thing I did when I came to Defiance was check out the Needwant, and they dealt in fair trade. In my mind, I thought every cop in Apostasy deserved death if they dealt in the slave trade. I looked to us as the good guys.

"Thlunyu, wai ga," I said. That translated to "Tonight we go." I looked at Irisa for a moment, "Inyee vadica sedda eerah." That translated to "You better stay here."

"Oh, hell no!" She was visibly upset by the idea of staying behind.

"Nolan, Nia udia ibrae," I said. That translated to "It's Nolan I'm thinking about."

"Let me worry about that?" She said, "You worry about getting your sister back."

I put my head on the table for a moment, and said, "Nolan is going to kill us."

Rynn and Irisa prepared some food for the journey, but I could sense the anticipation in the room. I prepared all the weapons by cleaning them and lubing them, the same way I did since my childhood. Everybody had a job to do on the day before we traveled into enemy territory, and with Irocuz's stash of weapons, I felt the job would go smoother than expected. I grabbed an EMC Sniper Rifle from his hope chest, and he kept about six boxes of rounds with it. Inside the hope chest were a plethora of trinkets I had collected over the years. I had gotten them from several sources, including off the dead ark hunters we came across on our adventures. I pulled out a silver bracelet with a gem in the middle of it, and set it on the floor next to me, when Irisa picked it up off the floor. The only reason I kept it was because it signified my first human kills on the Muskogee Arkfall when I was only fourteen.

Irocuz and I had both of the med tech rollers because they were the fastest cars we had at the time. Those med-tech rollers were meant for harsh conditions, and the terror-forming wrecked Muskogee. When those two golden arks hit down in Muskogee, they were on opposite ends of the city. We had them on radar the whole time, and Irocuz told me to go north while he went south. I parked my roller right next to the broken ship, and ran up inside with my potech pistol and my tool bag. Immediately, I tore open the control panel, and began to remove cable, when an older, bushy haired man rolled up in the ship. He held his weapon on me for a minute.

"I'm only here for that orb, son," he said. He wore an ugly leather jacket, and had a long beard. He looked like he hadn't bathe in months. I could smell him from across the ship, and the ship wasn't small.

I looked over at the blue energy ball, and said, "Take it. I'm only here for the wiring and metals." I continued to work diligently, and the older man wiggled the orb out of its position. He ran out the ship, and I didn't think anymore about him. I had the panel completely stripped, and the wires were in a bundle by my feet. It was a dangerous job because several ark hunters had died trying to extract cabling from other arks, but Irocuz taught me well. One wrong move, and an electrical shock would have me singing songs to Irzu, but I kept working on the cabling until I heard somebody scream, "Get the fuck on the ground!"

I ran over to the door, pistol out, and saw two men standing over the older bearded guy, and they were about to put a bullet in the back of his head.

"Just take the orb. I have a daughter," the man said.

I immediately thought about Ireena, and felt a deep sorry for the guy. Arks were all about the money, and nobody deserved to be shot in the head for a bit of money. When one of the miscreants cocked his weapon, I put a bullet in the guy's head, and then two in the other man's chest.

"Oh, God. I don't want to die," the man on the ground said. "I'm just trying to make a living."

"Get up," I said, "Go make some script."

He slowly stood to his feet, and said, "Thank you, kid."

"They call me, Lil' Panther," I said.

He pulled the bracelet off his right arm, handed it to me, and said, "This is the most valuable thing I have. It's just a trinket, but it means a lot. Take it for payment?"

I took the trinket, but I didn't need any payment for saving a good man. I placed the trinket on my wrist, and wore it a few days. When Irocuz and I returned home with our stash of cables and rare metals, I placed the trinket in the hope chest. I would look at it every once in awhile to remember my first kills. It wasn't something I bragged about to anybody, but it felt good to save a man's life.

I wasn't paying that close of attention to Irisa because I was looking for Irocuz's old, potech pistol that I knew was at the bottom of the hope chest. I looked over at her, and she was holding the bracelet up to the light, and she was scraping some gunk off the back of it. She looked like she was panicking, and I thought she was going to hyperventilate.

"Irisa, miat es tiani?" I asked. That translated to "Irsia, what's wrong?"

"Fiacat, udiaye brino inyee ga?" That translated to "Where did you get the bracelet?" She seemed agitated over the whole thing, but I didn't know why.

"Ni winyae fi zushone's earaeinka," I said, "Fi sirongje cronitiki jagi. Viti nae restini." That translated to "I saved a man's life a long time ago. It was payment."

"Lil' Panther, nowdi nae inyee?" She asked, "Inyee winyae Nolan." That translated to "Lil'Panther, that was you? You saved Nolan." Irisa handed me the bracelet, and she had removed the gunk on the backside of it. I looked at the inscription, and it read, "Irisa." I sat on the hope chest for a moment, and looked at it closely. Irisa was standing in front of me crying. "Nolan, Ni vavae umaca tro fiacat ta cheti zodica presana ni shwei umaca." That translated to "I gave the bracelet to Nolan so he would know that I loved him." She kissed me on the lips. "This must be a sign from Irzu." She placed the bracelet on my wrist, and said, "This bracelet means the world to me, Tommy. My Irathient father gave this to me. It was his last gift to me before he was murdered." She placed the bracelet on my right wrist."

I looked down at it for a moment, and said, "Ni sho zida fittica." That translated to "I will wear it forever."

Later that morning,

I broke all the weapons down, lubed them, and put them back together. I handed the unloaded rifle to Rynn, and she did a function check on it. I handed her the rounds, and once she inspected the weapon, she set the rounds and weapon in her roller.

I had my sniper rifle that Irocuz gave me for my fourteenth birthday, and it was a BAS-7 De-railer, and I always kept it cleaned and lubed. I handed it to Irisa, and she inspected the weapon, and placed it in our roller. We had two shotguns in the roller too. I had a Berzerker Shotgun with explosive rounds and Irisa had the Desperado shotgun.

From the map, Apostasy was located in a valley that was caused by the terraforming of the planet, and I calculated the maximum effective range of the two sniper rifles at two thousand meters. Both of the rifles had enhancements on them such as high dollar scopes and fifty round magazines. After Irisa placed on her sidearm, she sharpened her throwing knives one by one. She had over twenty on her person at any given time.

Rynn looked up at me for a second, and I could tell that she wanted to say something. Whenever she was going to say something that would cause me grief, she always paused for a second. She just didn't blurt out hurtful things to me for obvious reasons. When an Irath loved, they treated that person with respect.

"Viti rahana retha cronixia, Lil' Panther," she said, "Slova nati wei folla apia, soka kena nayno gayadie bodi inka wata." That translated to "It's been four years, Lil' Panther. Even if we find her, she might not want to come back with us."

I looked off in the distance for a moment, and asked, "Irisa, udae miat inyee?" I basically asked her what she thought.

And she said, "Inyee, soka sho vitai, uado fefi a gayadie solicita." That translated to "She will see you, and want to come home."

"Koso Izru trania chodae," I said. That translated to "Only Irzu can tell."

What made me nervous was because I loved two women at the same time, and it was hard to deal with that. Rynn's focus on preparing for war was like nothing I had seen in my entire life. She seemed to only focus on the mission, but all I could do was wonder if she thought about me. It's funny how she told me a thousand times that she thought about me, but I wanted her to say it one more time. As I watched her from my roller, she finally looked over at me with a stern look, and then she broke into a smile.

"Let's rest, and then we'll take off at eighteen hundred," I said.


	7. Chapter 7

Apostasy

Chapter Seven

We drove two vehicles, two rollers to traverse the rugged terrain, and due to the length of the trip, we expected to stumble upon Apostasy between five and six arduous hours. We left the house at fourteen hundred hours with plenty of fuel, water, food, weapons, explosives, and blankets for the frigid nights. Apostasy set approximately two hundred and forty miles west of Defiance, and the terrain brutalized the vehicles. I removed my wallet from my back pocket because the bulge hurt my hips as I drove. One spare tire for each vehicle, and I had hoped we wouldn't hit any impassible terrain. I placed the spare tires on both vehicles, and made sure I aired them up proper because I didn't have a good assessment of the dangers.

"Are we going to save your sister or kill everybody?" Irisa asked. Her face flushed with worry. I patted her on the knee, and gave her a stern look.

"I just want my sister back," I said. "I don't think anybody has to die over that."

Rynn took plenty of time mapping out the path between our home and Apostasy with all the gas stations marked on the map. "Just so we don't have a fuel problem. I want to make sure we know all the fuel stations between here and Apostasy," Rynn said. We had enough fuel to make it to Apostasy, but only enough to make it a quarter of the way back. I took the lead, and Rynn followed behind me, and when we drove, it was at a moderate speed of fifty-five miles per hour. We spent so much time in the roller that it became fetid. When we stopped for a quick bathroom break, Irisa and I both complained that we'd need to clean out the car thoroughly upon our return to Defiance.

Within two hours of driving, we stopped by a small town called Utopia, and they had two stores that sold fuel. It didn't take us long to fuel up our vehicles, buy some snacks, and other things to eat. Rynn walked back to my vehicle with the map, and pointed out Utopia, and then said, "A good two hours and ten minutes left," she said. "We're right on target."

"It has been awhile since I've traveled this far west," I said. "It has changed a lot."

"Yeah. I think the last time was right before you moved to Defiance," Rynn said.

"Yeah," I said.

"It's the same old crummy place to me," Irisa said. "I came through these parts about a year ago."

Apostasy…

The heat and humidity beat us badly, but we didn't let it stop us from what we had to do. Apostasy's size was no more than five hundred people, but they had ark-hunters frequenting the place daily. We parked on a hill on the opposite side of the community, and watched it from afar. We wanted to get as much intelligence as needed before we entered the town. Irisa looked through the binoculars, and gave a field report. Immediately, she noticed four cops patrolling the streets with po-tech pistols riding their hips.

"The brothel is on the far edge of the town," she said with a straight face. She spied on the whorehouse for a moment, and then said, "Several young Iraths are soliciting men in front of the establishment."

She handed me the binoculars, and I looked at the girls prancing in front of the brothels, but I didn't see Ireena at all. I feared that she might not be in Apostasy, but I believed what Star said. In some ways, I thought I was insane to believe a child about the whereabouts of Ireena, but I did. At the same time, I thought I might not easily recognize her because they kidnapped her at the age of twelve. She was a bony, twelve-year-old girl, not much there except a cute smile. Now, she would be sixteen-years-old, and I could only imagine that she grew up some, a lot, and I feared I'd overlook her. I saw her everyday up until the time the kidnappers stole her, so I felt pretty confident that I could recognize her. "You two stays here," I said. "I'm going in like any other ark-hunter."

"Are you sure?" asked Rynn with a calm demeanor.

"I want to get a feel of the place," I said. "This town preys on Irathients."

"It's slave town," Irisa said as she stared into Apostasy. "Nolan told me to always avoid this place."

"By the power of Irzu, I hope it burns," Rynn said.

"How will we know when to come in?" Irisa asked with a grimace.

"You'll know," I said as I reached into the vehicle for my backpack. It had three grenades in it, and I expected to use them. My gut told me the people who kidnapped my sister lived in Apostasy, and I could only imagine how many other settlers stole Iraths from their families. I took the main, dirt road into the city, and on the edge of town, an old, metal guard shack stood with two officers on the inside. Above the door of the shack was a sign that read, "Law Shack." One of the guards stepped out of the shack, and immediately made me sign in with my full name, so I did. At first, I thought I recognized the man from an ark-fall, but I couldn't tell. His rough skin was off putting, and from the way he coughed, he sounded sick.

The guard looked at me for a second, down at his sign in sheet, and then back at me, "Okay, Rusty Brand. Don't bring your god here, and we won't have a problem," he said with an awkward smile. "You look familiar," he said with a grimace. "Do I know you?" I looked directly at his name tag, and it read Cobin. The name didn't sound familiar, but his face, on the other hand, resembled a marauder that Ircuz beat.

"I don't think so," I said with a smile. "I just came in from Las Vegas. I came to Apostasy for the Iraths." Irathient sex slaves were the number product in Apostasy according to the rumors, and I knew I had to play that angle so I won't look out of place.

"Don't we all?" the guard asked.

Apostasy smelled like any other fledgling town: sewage and death. I walked into the small city with my po-tech pistol on my right hip, into the lawkeeper's office, and stood by the door until one of the two deputies acknowledged me. One of the deputies looked familiar to me for some reason, and I tried my best to remember where I saw him. He was a tall, somewhat rough looking older Caucasian man with a scruffy face. He had his legs up on the desk, and saw me when I came into the establishment, but never properly acknowledge me. It was highly possible the kidnappers built Apostasy on the backs of Irathient women, and the reason the men seemed familiar was because they kidnapped Ireena.

"What can I do for you, boy?" He asked. I had talked to Derrick Shooty a lot as a child, and due to living in the Badlands, he was the only black guy I knew. Most Iraths hated him including Irocuz, but because he paid them script every month, they tolerated him. Mister Shooty ran multiple businesses throughout the land, and he told me when a man called another man a boy that it was a sign of disrespect. I hadn't seen him since my tenth birthday, but I remembered that lesson.

"I wanted to see about some employment," I said smilingly. "A lawkeeper's job."

He laughed at me, and then said, "We'll never hire the likes of you in Apostasy." He laughed again, and then when he stood up, I realized where I had seen him. He was a marauder, a thug who often stole the booty of other ark-hunters. It all made sense to me now of who kidnapped Ireena and why. It occurred right after the Miami, Oklahoma ark-fall when fifty or so ark-hunters charged for Miami at the same time. After Irocuz and I tussled with a group of ark-hunters, we traveled down to Old Tulsa, and set up a small camp site. The gate guardsman tried to attack Irocuz in Miami, and he beat the ark hunter within inches of his life. I'm not sure why he let the man live because we met up with his rowdy friends later.

The terraforming obliterated the entire city of Tulsa, Oklahoma , and over two hundred thousand people died after a series of devastating earthquakes. When the debris hit against the planet, a lot of it fell on the city, and completely eradicated the population. I was young, maybe four-years-old when it happened, and I remember how stressed it made Iroza. We had calculated that another ark would fall within a day or so in the general area that would make us a fortune.

I started a fire, placed on some pow burgers, and cooked them slowly. "Nia brobra," I said as I turned the meat. I felt joyful because of the possibility of a hardy bounty was imminent. Irocuz lay on the ground silently, and kind of laughed. I basically told him, "I'm famished."

"Nia brebra," he replied. He basically told me, he was starving, and it was a game we often played with each other. The Irathient word for hungry was "Bribra," but because the variations were so close, we all had our own words for explaining our hunger. I always said, "Brobra." Irocuz always said, "Brebra" And when it came to Momma and Ireena, they always said, "Bribra." It was a family thing. As I sat on an old log, cooked the food, and Irocuz dozed off, a vehicle stopped approximately one hundred feet from our position. Irocuz hopped off the ground, and darted to the tree line to take a position, and then when the marauders came up to the camp, they acted irascible.

"Where's my damn pow burger?" One of the scruffy men asked. His face tattered and worn, and from the looks of it, he lived a horrid life. I didn't say anything at all at first. They smelled of urine, sweat, and it was close to being unbearable. "I'm talking to you, boy."

"You're breaking ark-hunter code," I said calmly. Due to our family sop Irocuz absconded to the woods, and I thought I'd better handled the situation with some sense. I knew my father laid in wait for me to move out of the way before he put a bullet in them, so I waited before I signaled to fire. "It's unlawful to enter another hunter's camp uninvited."

"There's four of us and one of you," the other guy said. He was the same guy that stood across from me. His name tag read Franks. He was much larger now than four years ago; however, his attitude hasn't changed at all. The night had overtaken the day, and I could barely make out the facial features, but I remembered Deputy Franks. He kicked me while I sat on the log, and then I stood to my feet. He pulled out his po-tech pistol, and pointed it at my head. I tensed up, and looked right down the barrel of the gun, but I didn't want to signal to Irocuz while the animal had a weapon to my head.

"Don't point your weapon at me," I said with a grimace. The other men stood around laughing, and kicking dirt on my food.

"I could kill you right now," he said with a scowl on his face. I had my hands in the air, and watched his hands closely, but he didn't have his index finger on the trigger. Immediately, he took my sidearm, but didn't check me for my po-tech ankle pistol, and in hostile situations in the field, nobody did a thorough check for weapons. I wasn't worried about Irocuz at all because we didn't survive the Badlands out of ignorance. We constantly prepared for every possible outcome in the wilderness, and because of my size at the age of fifteen, they dropped their guard. They didn't see me as a threat at all, and I believed that was the reason I got away.

"I got a goddamn rope in the roller," Franks said with a grimace on his face. At the time, I didn't understand what he meant when he referenced a rope. It was a reference to some historical atrocities committed in the Old World. The men discussed amongst themselves about stealing my booty, roller, and killing me. Quietly, I backed away from them, and absconded to the thick brushes, and watched them as they confabulated about killing me. I let out a bird sound, and then suddenly, a gun blast, and two of the marauders went down immediately. The third guy tried to run back to the roller, and I came out of the tree line, shot him in the back, and listened to him screaming in agony. Deputy Franks hopped in his roller, took off, and left his dying comrades to die.

One of the guys struggled to breath, and I walked over to him, grabbed his po-tech pistol, and commandeered it. When I walked away from him, Irocuz walked up, and said, "Kuga umaca!" That translated to "Kill him!"

"Tro briaga fasa wae!" I said. That translated to, "The threat has stopped!"

He walked up to the man, and shot him in the head. Turning back to me, he stared like a father does at his son, and screamed, "Badlands, Teetick es." That translated to, "This is the Badlands."

"Oot, Pappa!" I said. That translated to, "But, Pappa!"

"Inyee hena snea enyee," he said. I stared at him for a moment, and then sat down on my log. The fire and dirt ruined the meat, and now I lost my appetite, and didn't feel like making any more. I stared at the dying flame, and then packed up the campsite, and Irocuz wouldn't let me bury the men. In time, hellbugs would devour the bodies, and he didn't care. It wasn't the first time he killed people, and just let the bodies rot. He just repeated, "Inyee hena snea enyee." That meant, "You have to be strong."

Now, I stood in front of the marauder who escaped, and I was no longer the fifteen-year-old kid. I was my father's son, and I had every intention of killing Deputy Franks, but not now. Finding Ireena was the goal, and to leave Apostasy without her would be a failure. I walked out of the lawkeeper's office, and heard one of the deputies say, "Good riddance."

I walked into the gravel street, and young, human girls played quietly in front of the hovels that set about ten feet away from the main road. One of the human girls had a younger Irathient child on a leash, and it enraged me in ways that I had never imagined. It reminded me of one of Irocuz's favorite sayings: when evil is allowed to exist, it permeates through every crevice of society. Several vendors walked the thoroughfare selling candies. I could smell the candy popcorn, caramel apples, and cotton candies in the air. There weren't any Iraths merely playing outside, but plenty of them solicited miners and ark hunters in front of the Sexpot, the club at the end of the corner. It appeared the humans ran Apostasy, and used the Iraths as sex slaves. Across from the Sexpot was the Cum-Lately, and it had another group of girls on the outside of it. The Bazaar was on the next street over, and it took up the entire block. Most of the homes were nothing more than Old World shipping containers that had been transformed into hovels.

I walked up to the brothel on the right, and one of the Iraths said, "You don't want to be around here too long." She said it plainly and clearly." She stepped in front of me, and then said, "The ark hunters don't take kindly to you black ones." She laughed. "I don't mind though."

I smiled for a moment, and said, "Ireena, vo inyee presana?" That translated to, "Do you know Ireena?"

She looked at me for a second in shocked, and then said, "Ireena, ni presana," she said in astonishment. "Tommy, inyee na?" She said, "I know Ireena. Are you Tommy?"

"Tommy, nia," I said. "Ni gayadae haddia Ireena solicita." That translated to, "I am Tommy. I came to take Ireena home."

She looked at me for a second, and then pulled me into the club, sat me down at a table to the rear, and sat on my lap. It was partially full, and most of the occupants were humans. The young Irathient girl on my lap smelled sweet, but she had a scar on her right cheek. It looked like somebody purposely cut her. "Peeia," she said as her eyes pointed to the young Irathient girl across the room. I looked over at the young girl, and she wore her hair long. She had on a golden dress, and the blouse was cut off to show her midsection. She stood quietly on the other side of the room, and I immediately recognized her to be Ireena. I pulled out fifty scripts, and handed it to the girl for her help.

"Inyee ga!" I said. I was telling her to go, and she quickly hopped off my lap, and scurried out the front door. I had eyes on my sister, and she was now a teenager, but worked as a prostitute. The idea of men abusing her daily burned me on the inside. Somehow I envisioned myself in her shoes, and the girl that I saved from the Badlands, that was my family, and that I loved was now thrown into a life of prostitution.

I looked around the bar for a moment, and I already knew about the bouncer in the far corner of the establishment. He had one po-tech pistol on his hip, and a bulge on his right ankle that I assumed was a gun. He didn't have on any armament, and that was one of the first things I checked. There was another bouncer who stood near Ireena as she danced in the far corner. He was slender, about one hundred and fifty pounds, and his pistol hung loosely on his hip. When he went to draw his weapon, I expected their to be some lag time because of the way he wore his belt. He wore cowboy boots, and I expected he had a pistol in at least one of them. I looked closely at his crotch for a possible weapon, but I didn't see anything at all.

I approached the bar, and the bartender looked under the counter for a moment, and I heard something metal slide from underneath it. I assumed he had a weapon in reach or a weapon already trained on me. His eyes were close together, and he had a craggy face. It was rugged and uneven, and he looked like the sun punished him. His eyes were unwelcoming, but I ordered a small whiskey, and then set back down. Another man approached the bar, and he greeted him with a smile, and it was as I expected.

One of the ark-hunters traversed the floor, and walked over to Ireena, flashed some money, and then took her upstairs. I quickly gulped down my whiskey, walked out the club, and then around to the back of the building. I climbed up the side of the whorehouse, and then checked in several windows until I found the room where Ireena was located. The entire room had an ugly, red wallpaper with hearts on it. A vanity mirror set to the front of the room, and a walk in closet off to the right of the room. The ark hunter, a frumpy man about twenty-five-years-old, pulled off his clothes, and stood in the middle of the area nude. He then shoved her on the bed violently, and smacked her a few times. It was aggressive. She screamed, and tussled with the guy, and I realized immediately that it wasn't foreplay. I quickly lifted up the window, pulled out my charge blade from my left boot, and slit his throat. His blood splattered on the floor, shot out of his neck, and I knew he wouldn't last long. The more he struggled the faster he bled, and I stood behind him as he flailed his arms, and the blood spew into the air. I looked at Ireena, and told her to be quiet because she let out a loud scream until she recognized me.

"Tommy?" She asked.

The man stumbled off the bed, and tried to run for the door, but I beat him in back of the head. I knew his screams alerted the rest of the ark-hunters throughout the facility, but I didn't care. He fell forward onto the door, and broke it completely off its hinges. He landed in the middle of the hallway, and then some Iraths screamed from down the hallway.

"Tommy, viti no," I said with a grimace. I ran over to Ireena, hugged her, and what I said translated to, "It's me, Tommy."

Quickly, she hugged me, and then put on her clothes, and ran over to the window. She looked back at me, and said, "Ga ee nay." That translated to, "Let's go."

"Rynn es iddie bubowa," I said. "Ga!" That translated to, "Rynn is on the hill. Go."

"Miat ibra inyee?" She asked. That translated to, "What about you?"

I looked at her for a moment, and then said, "Deputy Frank, nia nay kuga." That translated to ,"I am going to kill Deputy Frank."

"Inyee presana?" She asked. That translated to, "You know?"

'Ni presana," I said, "Papi moregyniae." That translated to, "I know. Pappa died."

She began to sob, and said, "Inyee kuga Deputy Frank. Cheti freggiae nena." That translated to, "Kill Deputy Frank. He kidnapped me."

"Soya," I said as she climbed out the window.

Suddenly three men entered into the room, and I fired several rounds as they approached. They were half nude, and off balance. They looked like they had hastily hopped out of bed, and drunk, so that put me at an advantage. I knew I hit one immediately because I saw him go down in the threshold of the door. It happened all of a sudden, and I started pulling the trigger, and then ducked down on the side of the bed. One of the men tried to run around the corner, and I shot him in the left ankle. He buckled. When he fell, his head hit the corner of the dresser, and died on contact. The other body guard lay in the hallway gasping for air, and when I walked by him, I put a bullet in his head.

The Iraths screamed so loudly, and the half naked Iraths ran by me, down the stairs, and hopefully out the building. Out of nowhere, ark hunters on the bottom floor fired aimlessly into the ceiling at random, and I had to immediately duck back into my sister's room. The bullets tore through the wooden floor, but none of the rounds came near me. I knew I had to do something fast in order to abate and terminate the attacks. I pulled a grenade out of my bag, ran into the hallway, and waited for a second.

"Is somebody going up there?" One of the ark hunters asked. I took the pin out the grenade, and knew I had three seconds to throw it once I released the pin. It was a votanic grenade with a blast radius of one hundred meters. Not only would it take out everybody on the bottom floor, but the damage would decimate the second floor too. "You're surrounded, ark hunter."

"I don't expect to live," I said. "I came to die." I tossed the grenade down the stairwell, started counting, and then ran for the window. I screamed at the girls to run, and they did. By the time I ran down the street, the first floor exploded, and when I turned around to see my work, about three men stumbled out of the burning building. The girls in front of the whorehoue ran across the street to the other brothel before the explosion, and avoided most of the debris. A large gaggle of Apostasy citizens charged the burning building with water jugs, and I head for the lawkeeper's station. I had no plans on letting Officer Frank live.

Lawkeeper's station…

The town bustled with people, mostly humans, and the aliens were all in servitude, and even though I was nowhere near the club, I could hear people screaming, and running that way. It gave me the opportunity to handle Deputy Frank inside of the jailhouse. I walked back to the lawkeeper's office, and Deputy Frank sat in his chair with his legs propped up on the desk. He wasn't paying any attention to the chaos happening outside of the jail-house, and I didn't care. People screamed up and down the street, but it was a party night with ark-hunters and miners always yelling. I just stood in his office, quiet, and holding on to my gun. "You back?" He asked. I didn't say anything at all. I looked at him for a moment, smiled, and leaned on his counter. Suddenly, I heard a loud explosion from behind me, and I didn't know what caused that.

"What have you done?" He asked with a grimace.

"Don't touch your weapon," I said. "I'm surprise you don't remember me," I said calmly. Every move he made, I watched, and if he acted like he was going for his weapon, I planned on shooting him in the chest. "I definitely remember you."

He took off his hat, leaned forward, and said, "Should I remember you, boy?" The way he looked up at me I could tell he thought he had control of the situation. His office smelled like human feces, so I thought the other deputy was in the bathroom. The rest of the town attended to the whorehouse fire, and I had my attention on Deputy Frank.

"Of course," I said with a smile. "Surely, you remember me because you kidnapped my sister."

He laughed for a moment. It was a vociferous laughed that angered me. He cocked his head backwards, and let out a roar. When he reached for his weapon, I put two rounds in his chest, and he fell back in his chair. His body convulsed when he slid into the floor, and then he was completely still. I walked over to him as he slobbered, and put a round in his head. Another deputy came out of the bathroom, and he fired one round into my shoulder, and it caused me to fly back against the wall. The jailhouse door flew open. My weapon fell out of my hand, slid across the floor, and then he charged at me, but Irisa shot the man in the head before I could pull the small gun from my boot. He bent over, and tried to reach for me, but he fell face first on the ground. Slowly, I slid up the wall with Irisa's help, and the pain from the round was almost unbearable. Not only did it hurt, but it also burned. She helped me stumble out the jail, and over to the roller parked next to the building. People screamed from down the street because of the dead bouncers and burning whorehouse, and everybody seemed to be in that direction. I grabbed the fuel container from the vehicle, and brought it into the jail house. It didn't take me long to drench the entire building in gas, and then I lit it on fire.

"You're really causing a mess," Irisa said. "Don't worry about the two gate guards. I blew them up with a grenade."

"I should have burned the entire town to the ground," I said. "This place is a slave camp."

I walked out of the building, and the fire roared behind me. Irisa and I hopped in the roller, and took off out the front gate. It took a few minutes before anybody realized what was happening. The smell of the burning building trumped that of the cotton candy, and I had to move my people out of the area. A few people screamed, "Fire!" But we kept driving until we reached Rynn and Ireena.

Back Home…

Momma and I hugged Ireena so hard that we didn't want to let go. Rynn walked up behind me, and placed her head against my back, and now that all my family was in place, I felt I could finally rest. We had a long cry because of the passing of Irocuz, and Momma prepared his body for burial while we brought Ireena back home.

Rynn guided me over to the couch, and she pulled off my shirt, attended to my shoulder wound, and it was nothing more than a graze, but it hurt a lot. She sterilized a needle with fire and alcohol, and began sewing up my wound. It wasn't her first time taking care of one of my many wounds, but she always did it with caring hands. It took approximately five minutes for her to sew me up, and then I stepped outside on the front porch, and sat down against the banister. Rynn sat in the porch swing, and leaned back as the fresh air brushed across her soft face.

Irisa and I sat on the front porch while Momma and Ireena caught up on life, and I was beat. She laid her head on my lap, and I gently massaged her scalp. She closed her eyes, and appeared to fall asleep, wake up, and then fall back to sleep.

Rynn's eyes looked like she was full of sleep, and Irisa had already given up trying to stay awake. It wasn't an uncomfortable quietness, but everybody kind of sat with a subtle dignity. I just sat on the porch, facing Rynn, and she looked out into the yard. I sat enamoured by her, completely fixated on her every move; it was a love, a quiet love.

"Tommy, wa wedocai nena," she said smilingly. That translated to, "Tommy, stop watching me."

"Prapai, inyee na," I said with a smile. "Nia prelala inyee." I basically told her, "You are beautiful. I am enjoying you." She smiled sheepishly, and then looked over at the pond.

"Viti ahehi wodi shidda es bodi," she said, "Nia trilled." She said, "It's good our family is back. I'm happy."

I looked at her for a moment as she looked down at the ground, and gently rocked back and forth. "Inyee presana miat fefi?" I wanted her to know that we were at a do or die moment. I could no longer live with my heart torn, and my life on hold. My heart hurt because I desired to be united with her, and I asked her if she knew what I wanted.

"Thei," she said softly. "Tiriat. Ni vordi presana inyee oragra nena." I looked at her, and she said, "Marriage. I don't know why you love me." She looked over at the pond, and said, "Oadi ugbe medea yo inyee." That translated to, "My heart burns for you."

"Inyee uado Ni indinee tobra Defiance," I said, "Inka Irisa." That translated to, "You and I live in Defiance with Irisa."

She shook her head in disagreement. "No! Inyee uado Irisa indinee tobra Defiance," she said, "Ni indinee eerah." That translated, "You and Irisa live in Defiance, and I'll live here."

I looked at her for a moment, and I loved everything about her, but she pointed at the ground when she said, "Here." She doesn't change her mind easily, and that scared me. "Ni fefi inyee tobra Defiance." That translated to "I want you in Defiance."

"No, Tommy," she said, "Ni indinee eerah inka Irosa."

"Commick?" I asked. "Commick?" I asked her why did she wanted to stay, and she gave me a long stare, and then said in a brittle voice that she wanted to stay for the farm.

"Haddia sopadi tretra," she said. "Ni tretra. Inyee portae script." I looked at her for a moment, and wondered how she'd manage to farm all the land. She wanted me to send her half my paycheck to help her with the farm.

"Teetick tweda shopa flacki," I said. That tranlated to, "This doesn't feel different."

"Teetick preda es ahehi," she said, "Viti woodi preda," she said as she pointed to me. "Inyee na tro zusone." That translated to, "This land is good. It's our land. You are the man."

I sat back against the banister, and Irisa lay sound asleep on my lap, and even though I didn't like anything Rynn said to me, I had to respect her plan. The women wanted to stay, and work the land, and Irisa and I would work in Defiance, and be the stable income. "Ni uda inyee fachi oragra." That translated to, "I think you fear love."

"Ni yannae," she said softly. "Inyee hena tova oragra es enyee." That translated to, "I did. You have proved love is strong."


	8. Chapter 8

Apostasy

Chapter Eight

Nolan acted a fool for nearly two days after Irisa and I returned because he thought we went somewhere, and married. But after we promised him that didn't happen, he sat at his desk, arms folded, and then asked me about Rynn. He relaxed, and then placed his hands on his desk. Tapping his fingers on the desk like he lost complete patience with me, he said, "Ahem." His hands torn from hustling his way through the Badlands, and his scowl of a man who liked the taste of spirits. I looked over at Irisa, and she had her head on the desk, and I automatically thought she told him everything. For a moment, I became upset with her.

"Inyee kovac!" I exclaimed. I looked directly at Irisa, and accused her of telling Nolan about Rynn, and she immediately stood to her feet, fist clinched, and growled. Eyes wide opened, face scrunched, and then she yelled.

"I didn't say anything," she said, "Why would I tell?" She walked to the other side of the room, and said, "You're being a dick!"

"She didn't tell me anything," Nolan said with a scowl on his face. "Doc did." He rubbed the razor stubble on his face, and waited for me to say something. I looked back at Irisa, and she stood behind me with her arms folded, and then she placed them on my shoulders.

"She tell you we're married?" I asked. His visage didn't change at all, and I could smell the alcohol emanating out of his pores.

"Yeah," he said, "She told me every damn thing." He paused for a moment. "When we went after Rynn in that old mine, you purposely alerted her that we were coming, didn't you?"

"She's my wife," I said with energy. "I started the marriage ritual with her when I was sixteen. I've known her since I was five."

"You were never in a gang like Clancy thought?" He said, "Why did you let them believe that?"

"They assumed that because of my ways," he said, "Iraths raised me, and I carried myself like them. Instead of seeing me as me, they saw me as they chose to see me."

"You almost had everybody fooled," he said.

"Some knew. Datak Tarr knew," I said. "He said, 'I know an Irath when I see one.'" I laughed.

"So, did you help her escape?" He asked. Leaning forward on the desk, his visage changed, and now he looked serious, but I wasn't afraid of him.

"I tried, but she wouldn't take the key," I said. "I would have given it to her, and I make no apologies for that."

"I should fire you right now, Tommy," He said. "You're a freaking sneak!"

"And you're not?" Irisa asked.

"They killed her family, Nolan. I knew her before the scar," I said. "I knew her before all the pain. I knew her in her purest form. And if she hadn't killed them, then I would have. She's my wife, and she's taking care of my family farm." I looked back at Irisa, and said, "Irisa and I want to bond."

"Oh hell no," Nolan said. "I'm not comfortable with that polygamy shit."

I turned to Nolan, and said, "She's of age. It's her choice."

"She doesn't want to be in your polygamist bullshit," Nolan said.

"I do," she said in a strong voice. "Tommy is a liar like you, but better than you." She walked over to me, and placed my right hand on the desk, and pulled up my sleeve. "Look, Nolan? You owe Tommy."

Quickly, Nolan removed the bracelet, and turned it over to see Irisa's name. He gasped, and then Tommy said, "You're welcomed, old man."

"It was you?" He said in disbelief.

Irisa grabbed the bracelet, and then said, "It's Tommy's bracelet now, and he's part of our family now."

Nolan pressed his head up against the desk, and let out a long guttural sound, and then said, "You two go, and patrol. I need to have a man cry."

Irisa walked around the Bazaar, and I headed towards the Doc's office. I wanted to tell her to mind her business. Her coldness sometimes caused me to cringe, but I knew she had a kind heart for the needy. When I came to Defiance, she put in a good word for me with my landlord, Datak. But after a few months in the town, we had a huge argument over the treatment of a prisoner, Tol Val. She said that I fractured his jaw, and the reason I took him down was because he kicked over Rynn's boothe in the Bazaar. I realized I shouldn't have interfered because Rynn officially declared us as being apart. I heavily patrolled the area, and I kept a hawk's eye over her. When Tol Val kicked her booth, I took him out, and nearly beat him to death. I have to admit I went way overboard.

When I walked into the Doc's office, she sat across from the main entrance in a flimsy chair. Her bald, smooth head speckled with silver, and her eyes sunkened into her cranium like a monster. Her head protruded forward, and her smile seemed forced.

"Yeah! I told, you little urchin," she snapped. With her legs crossed, she said, "You purposely hid that kid from me."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said with a grimace. "You threw me under the bus for nothing."

"You're just going to stand there, lie, and pretend like you didn't move the kid," she said. "It's all fun and games until he starts a cult that engulfs Defiance."

"Quit acting crazy," I said. "You didn't have to tell Nolan."

"I've known about you and that Spirit Ryder from the very beginning," she said with a smirk. "At first, I thought you were just infatuated with her, and she wasn't returning your advances." She smiled. "Then I realize you were married to her."

"How did you know?" I asked.

She walked over to her desk, grabbed out a picture, and threw it on the table. It was a picture of Rynn and me when we were little kids. "Oh my gawd! Where did you get this?"

"Rynn dropped it," she said. "It was an accident." She paused for a moment, and then said, "Look at the back."

Back of picture:

Thank Irzu for bringing Tommy back into my life. In a few weeks, we will start the wedding ceremony, and I pray he can always look past my flaws, and see my heart.

End of Picture

"I won't deny Rynn," I said. I sat in the chair for a moment, and then asked, "What would you do for love?"

She looked at me with a straight face, and then said, "I've excelled in every area, but that one."

"Rynn hated my lawkeeper position," I said calmly. "She wouldn't move to Defiance with me, and stayed with the Spirit Ryders."

"But you knew she was the one killing?" She asked.

"Does it matter?" I asked with a grimace. "She never asked me to do anything shady, but if I had known those were the men who killed her parents and cut her face, I would have killed them myself."

"I can't judge you, Tommy," she said. "We all have our skeletons."

"I thought I was upset with you, but I'm not," I said. "I'm glad Nolan knows Rynn and I are married."

As I walked through the Bazaar, I grimly watched Rynn's old spot, and stood in it for a moment. I don't know why she stayed on my mind for so long, but she did. Irisia and I planned on going home at the end of the week, and hang with her, discuss life, and possibly talk her into living in Defiance. The other vendors went about their day, and didn't pay any attention to what I was doing. Irisa walked up to me with a chocolate bar in her right hand, and raised it up to my mouth.

"Only a small bite," she said, "I'm starving." I took a small bite, and then she said, "You want to get a basket after work."

"Yeah," I said. "It's been awhile." I looked at her for a moment while she took a bite of her candy bar, and we had to exercise restraint because Nolan walked out of the lawkeeper's station, and looked in our direction. Irisa waved at him, and he just folded his arms, and scowled.

"Love you," she said. He walked back into the lawkeeper's office.

"He's acting like baby," I said.

"Oh he's mad because now he owes you," she said smilingly. "You saved his life. Honestly, I think he thought you were like an angel."

As we walked down the strip, I heard a roller honk several times, and when the car stopped, Rynn exited the vehicle with Ireena. I ran over to her, hugged her, and kissed her. "What are you two doing here?"

"I'm going to let her tell you," Rynn said. I held her left hand for a moment, and I could tell she had been working on the farm. Her rough hands felt hard to the touch, but I didn't mind. They were strong, but gentle, and no matter how tattered the dry air and heat made them, I felt good they would always become gentle when they touched my back.

"What's going on, Ireena?" I asked. She stood in front of me with wild, unkempt hair, and dingy clothes. She worked the farm with Rynn, and dirt filled her nails.

"My child is back in Apostasy," she said.

"Your child?" I asked. "How old?"

"Two," she said. "I have a little girl named Ivy."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

"Everything happened so fast," Irisa said, "I see how we missed her."

"We have to go back," I said.

"Okay," Irisa said.

"No. Just Ireena and I," I said.

"Oh bull," Rynn said. She walked up to me, and said with an angry scowl on her face, "You need backup. I'm not hanging in the rear." She embraced my hand like it was the last hand in Defiance, and said, "We're family, and we work as such."

"I know I messed up, brother," Ireena said, "I'm sorry." Without the makeup, I could see the years of abuse in her face, and it bothered me. I think deep down in my soul I feared knowing exactly what she endured. She gave Rynn and I the superficial story, but I didn't know anything about Ivy. If I had known a baby existed, I would have made retrieving her top priority.

"Who's the father?" I asked calmly.

She placed her spotted right hand over her heart, and with an emptiness that I hadn't seen in her, she said, "Deputy Frank." I tried not to show any negative expression or a change in my visage, but I faced Rynn for a moment. "When he snatched me from the farm, he raped me several times a day." I looked over at her. She stood in the middle of the street, and tears formed in her eyes. I embraced her, and then Rynn embraced me.

"I'm so sorry this happened," Irisa said.

"Frank's daughter ties a collar around Ivy's neck, and treats her like an animal," she said with a grimace. "I must take her out of that environment."

"We need to do this immediately," I said. Irisa squatted down in the middle of the roadway, chewed on a straw that she pulled from her pants pocket, and then I said, "I have some leave accrued."

"How much do you have Irisa?" I asked. She counted on her fingers for a moment, and then held up both hands, palms faced outwardly, and that indicated ten days worth.

"We'll need to find another roller," Irisa said as she looked back at the lawkeeper roller. "Nolan will need that one." It was true. We only had one roller for duty, and the last time Irisa and I took off in it, Nolan needed it for work. Fortunately, I knew of a source that had a sturdy roller with armor plating, and she kept it in the Hollows.

Irisa took Ireena to explain the situation with Nolan, and Rynn and I took a trip down to the Hollows, passed the Needwant, and to Sophia Staples' house.

Most people in Defiance didn't know much about Sophia Staples except she sang in the Needwant. I knew her from a long time ago, and I talked to her on occasions, but I tried to stay out of her face. She was in her mid-forties, an Irath, and had several kids, but they lived with their father. About ten years ago, she left her husband because he continued to kill people who stood in his way and in the way of his business. When Rynn and I arrived at her house, I could tell she paid people to keep it looking nice. Everything had a place. A flower bed set right outside her house, and it had exotic flowers in it. We were only on her front porch when Rynn nearly tripped over her own feet.

"Be careful, baby," I said.

"I'm good," she said. She looked back like something tripped her, but I didn't see anything. The porch didn't have any grooves, hills, or anything that should have caused her to stumble. The residents had a back-to-nature-feel that I liked. It reminded me of my childhood when my family went camping. It was easy to tell that no children lived in the house; however, it should have been teeming with little ones if not for her pacifist ways.

As soon as I went to knock on the door, Sophia answered. Older, about the same age as Iroza, and strong, but pleasant Irathient features, without her makeup, it was easy to see she had seen a lot of pain throughout her life. She had three adopted children much older than me, at least by five to six years, and three younger kids fifteen, fourteen, and twelve-years-old that lived with their father.

"What, Tommy?" She asked. She clasped her hands, and placed them in front of her body, and leaned against the door entrance. I hadn't spoken directly to her in awhile, but she changed her name when she arrived in Defiance. She grew tired of her husband's ruthlessness, but if not for him, I probably wouldn't have survived.

I looked at her for a moment, and said, "Do you remember my sister was kidnapped?"

She grimaced for a moment, and then stood up straight, and said, "Yes. Irocuz was quite distraught." Folding her arms, her visage changed to one of seriousness.

"I found her in Apostasy, and brought her back to Momma's house. The entire town was nothing more than an Irathient slave farm," I explained with enthusiasm. I stood with my hands behind my back, and Rynn stood right next to me, and at an equal distance from Sophia. "But I need your help. Ireena didn't tell me she had a daughter."

"What?" She asked. "I heard about what happened to the town." Her yellow eyes teared up a bit, and she looked down at the ground. "How did she not tell you about the child?"

"We moved quickly. I think she was just excited to see me, and didn't think about telling me about her," I said calmly. "We had to exit the city as fast as possible."

"How many will you kill this go around?" She asked. "Yeah, Tommy. There's news of the black Irath who wrecked Apostasy rumbling all over the Badlands."

I gave her a blank stare for a moment, and didn't know how to answer, and then Rynn said, "Rota, you know we did what we do. We do what we do for family. Just like Mister Shooty taught us. Mister Shooty gave me the gun to shoot one of the guys who killed my parents."

She grimaced for a second, and then said, "That's why I left him. All the kids wanted to stay with their father, and that broke my heart, but I couldn't be around all that."

"It's not a nice world, Rota," I said, "But I wasn't about to let Ireena's rapist get away with what he did to my family. My father died longing for his daughter."

"It's Sophia now," she snapped. "Call me Sophia, Tommy. Please! The same way I didn't tell anybody about you and Rynn I expect the same anonymity."

"Okay, Sophia. Your husband kept all of us afloat," I said, "If not for Mister Shooty, Rynn wouldn't have made it and we'd lost the farm." I tried to keep calm, and then said, "She's my only niece, and I need your roller, please."

"Promise me something?" She asked.

"What's that?" I asked.

"That you'll act diplomatic," she said, "You don't have to do everything by force."

"Of course I will act with diplomacy until it's time not to," I said. "Right, Rynn?"

"Exactly," she said smiling. "This town preys on Irathients. We're just going for the child, and leaving."

Lawkeeper's Office…

Nolan sat behind his desk with a look of horror on his face, and he had a bottle of whiskey atop his desk. Ireena sat in the chair directly in front of his desk, and when Rynn and I walked into the office, he immediately looked over at us. We sat behind my desk, and she sat on the floor next to my chair, and I placed my hand on the back of her neck. Irisa walked over to me, and sat on the edge of the desk, and then said, "Did you get it?"

"Yeah," I said, "I have the armored roller." Nolan took a swig of his alcohol, and then made an ahem sound. He looked raggedy, and the Badlands beat his face through the years. The razor stubble on his face looked rough. The leather jacket he wore looked faded, tattered, and the zipper didn't work. "I'm going back to Apostasy," I said with a grimace. "What say you, Nolan?"

"I'm not trying to stop you, Tommy," he said, "I do have a problem with you taking my daughter. That I don't like."

"I asked her to stay," I said.

"I'm not staying, Tommy," she said. "You can hush that noise right now."

"We go as a family," Rynn said.

"She's not your family. She's my family," Nolan said.

"We're all family," Irisa said. "I love Tommy."

"Listen. There's already a hunt for the Black Irath," Nolan said, "There's only one black guy who's speaking fluent Irathient." He looked directly at me, and said, "Inyee!"

"It's just an in and out operation," Rynn said. "In and out."

Ireena stood up, and said, "The child is mine. I'll just walk in, pick her up, and leave. Nobody else needs to enter the town." I looked over at her, and she didn't seem to have any problems at all.

"What's your relationship with Frank's wife?" I asked.

"She knows what her husband did to me," she said calmly. "She doesn't care as long as he brings home a check."

"Well. He's dead now, so maybe we should put a bullet in her too," Irisa said.

"Let's just go, and get the kid," Rynn said. "Nobody needs to die."

"Rynn's right," I said. "Let's get my niece without any ruckus."

Rynn and I drove in the souped up roller, and Irisa and Ireena drove in the other roller. Rynn rested her eyes a bit, and when I looked over at her, she opened her eyes, and asked, "What?" It was like she had a sixth sense because she always knew when I was admiring her beauty.

I smiled, and winked at her. "Can't I just look at you every now and again?" I asked. She laughed a little.

She smirked. "You make me feel like a princess," she said softly. "It's not necessary to treat me like a princess."

"Rynn, it's not an effort," I said, "What I feel for you flows as natural as a river."

She stuck her right hand into her bra, and pulled out a plastic baggy with some paper inside of it. I didn't know exactly what she had, but she had a somber look on her face. When she carefully pulled the folded up paper out of the baggy, she said, "This piece of paper means a lot to me." She gently unfolded it, and smiled. "Do you know what this is?" She asked. Holding the paper up for me to see it, it was a crude drawing of Rynn and I.

"I gave that to you right before you left," I said, "It was the saddest day of my life."

"And mine," she said, "This picture gives me comfort." She paused for a moment, and when I looked over at her, she said, "I love you, Tommy." Her voice became brittle, and then she said in Irathient, "Ni volaskia hena." Carefully, she folded the paper up, placed it back in the baggy, and put it back in her bra. She basically told me that she always loved me, and deep down through all the turmoil, I knew she always had.

"Ahiha," I said. "Inyee na oadi fualaha." That translated to, "Thanks. You are my princess."

When we arrived at Apostasy, the town bustled with activity. I climbed out of the car, kept an eye on the patrols, and I only saw two. Irisa decimated the lawkeeper's shack, and I burned the jailhouse to the ground previously. The smell of burnt wood permeated through the air, and tons of people roamed the streets throwing a party.

"Rynn, you and Ireena go," I said, "I'll keep an eye on you."

"In and out," Rynn said. She hopped into Sophia's roller, and then I handed her my automatic shotgun. I kissed Rynn on the lips for a long time, and then said hurry back. When Rynn drove off, Irisa opened up the trunk of the vehicle, pulled out my sniper rifle, and put it together.

"Wai hena popiana," she said. That translated to, "We have to prepare."

"Inyee na medano," I said. I simply told her that she was right, and it was true. I snapped the scope onto the weapon, and Irisa looked through her binoculars.

"Ireena's kun tro nadeecko," she said softly. I could see her at the door like Irisa said, but I had my eyes on the men walking by Rynn. One of them looked directly at her, and I wanted to keep an eye on that situation. He walked over to the car, and pulled up the handle, and then Rynn ran over to him, and pushed him away from the car. I put the red dot in the middle of the guy's chest, and when he reached into his shirt, I saw a black object, and put a round in his head. He fell on the ground, and the blood splashed on Rynn.

"Damn! Good shot," Irisa said. "It barely even made a sound."

When she handed the child over to Ireena, Rynn quickly got her in the car, drove away, and then people started gathering around the dead body. Once the vehicle exited the town, we quickly packed up, and prepared to leave. I waved for Rynn to continue to drive because it looked like several of the town's people hopped in vehicles, and headed toward us. I took my rifle out, and shot the driver in the first vehicle, and he flew off the road. The car went down into a ravine.

"Irisa, take the driver's seat," I said. I'll be the look out. Several of the men hopped into trucks, charged up the hill, and I began to snipe them. I hopped in the back seat, took out the back window, and kept my sights fixed on the next vehicle. As soon as he got close enough to us, I shot out his tires, and the vehicle came to a halt. The driver side occupant hopped out of the vehicle, and kicked the front tire. The driver hopped out, fired three shots at us, and I didn't think anything about it. He was too far away for his potech pistol to make a different. A small caliber handgun only had an effective range of about twenty-five meters. Unfortunately, it had a maximum range of nearly two thousand meters. I felt a sting in my stomach, but I didn't know what it was. I continued to watch the other vehicles, but they stopped their pursuit. When I turned around and couldn't breathe, I tried to scream. Finally, I said, "Irisa!" I could barely get the words out, and she looked back at me with her beautiful eyes.

"What's wrong, Tommy?" She asked. When she looked around at me, she began screaming. "Tommy! Stay awake. Irzu, please!"

Three days later…

"Dick! Dick! Hey, Dick! Wake up," Doc Ywell said, "I'm talking to you, idiot."

"What's going on?" I asked. When I tried to raise up, I felt nothing but utter pain in my midsection. "Oh that hurts."

"Don't get up," she said, "You've been shot in the midsection. Gawd, Tommy. Wear you freaking vest. What's wrong with you?"

"Is Rynn and Irisa okay?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. Rynn walked into the room, and I could tell she had been crying.

"What's wrong with your eyes?" I asked with a smile.

"You scared me," she said. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and I wiped her face. "We drove back non stop, Tommy," she said. "You're my life."

"And you are mine," I said. "Have you gotten any sleep?"

"Not really," she said. I placed my right hand on her cheek. "Doc is taking care of me. Go home, and sleep."

"Yeah. I'm not doing that," she said. "I will sleep where I can keep an eye on things."

"Is Irisa here?" I asked calmly.

"Yeah," she said, "Everybody is here. Your niece is beautiful," she said, "Smart."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Rynn sat me down on my couch, gave me a blanket, and cooked supper for me, and I liked it so much that I worried it would all go away. She cooked two pow steaks, mashed potatoes, gravy, and greens. She wore traditional Irathient garbs of the tribal people, and they were multicolored. For the first time since I lived in Defiance, she dressed like a woman instead of like an outlier. I glanced over at her, at her curves, and I desired her badly, but it wasn't feasible. She combed her apricot hair, and curled it. It was long, and fell down past her shoulders. I felt the throbbing pain in my midsection, and I didn't want to rip open the stitches. She stood over the oven, stirring the potatoes, and the fabric of her dress enhanced the curvature of her hips. The way it grabbed her buttocks and slid into her crotch caused me dismay because I knew I shouldn't think about sex at all. What might have been mundane to her, just food preparation, aroused me.

She looked back at me, and smiled. "Ni presana miat inyee na udai, Tommy. Doc triane me ianna." That loosely translated to "I know what you're thinking, Tommy. Doc said no sex."

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't do it. I laughed, and then I grabbed my midsection because it hurt so badly. "Inyee mowai nena ." I continued to laughed because she had me completely figured out from day one. I told her, "You got me."

She looked back at me, pointed to her head, and calmly said, "Ni presana." She was telling me that she knew she had caught me lusting after her.

Rynn did an excellent job preparing the food, setting the table, and even put a candle in the middle of it. We sat across from each other, and then prayed to Irzu. Before I began to eat my food, I looked up at her because I came to the realization that she wasn't staying for long. Cutting into her tender pow steak, she ate with such grace, and chewed slowly until she realized I hadn't touched my food. I hated that my heart filled with dread, and then she placed her eating utensils on the table.

"Vordi zefa ibra nena, Rynn," I said. I didn't change my visage to one of anger, and I quickly took a bite of my steak. I basically told her not to worry about me.

"Inyee na shopai tre tra tro nena," she said with a stern look. Looking down at her food, she then said, "Inyee presana Ni hena nay!" She basically said, "Your feelings matter to me. You know I have to go."

"Eerah, Ni fefi inyee," I said, "Tayado!" I placed my fork and knife on the table, and looked up at Rynn, and she began to cry. I just told her I needed her here, and then I said, "Please."

"Irisa, inyee hena," she said softly. She was basically saying that I had Irisa, and didn't really need her, and I didn't agree with that at all. She raised her voice slightly, and said, "Ni haddia sopadia tretra." She said that she took care of the farm.

"Inyee na bradick nena veecro inyee presana Ni eelledia vava chago iddie inyee," I said. That translated to, "You are abusing me because you know I won't give up on you."

"Gayada solicita, Tommy," she said, "Inyee uado Ni hapeedo tro tretra showawo." She said, "Come home, Tommy. You and I work the farm together." She stood up, walked over to me, and kissed me. "Eerah, inyee hena kadia. Solicita, inyee hena nena, Irosa, Ireena, uado Ivy." She said in English, "You have nothing here. At home you have me, Irosa, Ireena, and Ivy."

"Vava nena ekta cronixia, Rynn," I said, "Ni shol gayada solicita yo ahehi." That translated to, "Give me two years, Rynn. I will come home for good."

She raised up two fingers on her right hand, and said, "Ekta cronixia."

Gently, I held her two fingers, kissed them, and repeated, "Ekta cronixia."

Rynn helped Irisa move some of her stuff into my hovel, so she could continue to help me recover. We heard about a group of marauders attack an Irathient family, and kill the husband in New Hope, Oklahoma. They killed the father in the home, and raped their thirteen-year-old daughter. It scared me so much that I wanted Rynn back home with my Momma and sister. She knew how to handle a rifle, handgun, and a detonator. Doc Ywell made frequent stops by my flat warning me about not having sex, and Rynn abided by that rule. I was willing to break it, but she wasn't going to risk it.

When she left my flat, and took the family back to the farm, I already felt lonely, and Irisa made up for her absent. I laughed because she didn't listen to the doctor's orders at all, and if Rynn found out she was riding me in my condition, she'd have flipped out on everybody in the room. Irisa made me laugh because I didn't expect her to act so wifey like Rynn. She picked up my flat, cooked food, folded clothes, attended to my wound, and gave me sexual gratification. She wrote in her journal, read, and lived in my hovel I truly enjoyed her company, but certain things bothered me. I'm not the only person who had a wife and a paramour, and from what I could tell, Irisa didn't have a problem with it. She lay back in my arms, and I gently kissed her on the forehead, and asked, "Inyee vordi hena fi minane inka sneai tro illala?" I asked calmly. When asking such a thing, I didn't want to sound belittling in my pursuing an understanding, but I wanted to know how she felt about being the paramour in the relationship. In most Irathient tribes, the paramours were held to a high standard, respected, and treated well.

She sat up for a moment, and looked over at me with a calm look. Picking herself off the ground, she walked to the kitchen area, and got herself a few white crackers, and slathered some peanut butter on them. Her bare bottom looked cute, and her apricot bush was well-kept. "I'm not ignoring you," she said as she nibbled on the cracker for a moment. "Ni fefae snea tro illoola." She paused for a moment, but she said that she wanted to be the wife, and then she said, "Ni freyada oadi creolo." Then she paused, and said that she accepted her position.

She went about eating her crackers at the counter, and I gave a lot of thought about my relationship with Irisa. She pleased me, and I can't deny that; however, I feared her position in the family wouldn't live up to her expectations. Rynn and I married without any delay or apprehension, but I didn't feel the same with Irisa. I wanted her as my paramour, but I didn't want her to regret that choice.

"Vo inyee hena bufago?" I asked. That translated to, "Do you have regrets?"

"Nayno zema," she said with a smile. "Nayno zema." That translated to, "Not one."

I closed my eyes for a moment, thought back to my childhood, way back when I was about five, and when I first met Rynn in the Bazaar. I stood on a chair, stirred the hellbug soup, and yodelled to the potential customers. Momma and I had already sold nearly four hundred dollars worth of hellbug soup, and we were on the second batch. It was about nine o'clock in the morning when Mister Shooty and his family set up their boothe. Ion Shooty, an Irathient kid about twelve, looked over at me, and said, "Tommy, eseneziri." That translated to, "Hello Tommy."

"Ion, eseneziri," I said. I looked over at their booth, and Ion said, "Ynn, gayada eerah." He said, "Ynn, come here." I looked over at her, and she was so beautiful to me that I nearly tipped over the soup.

"Tommy, snea copada," Momma said with a stern face.

"Soya, Momma," I said as I kept watching Ynn. Ion's sisters were all pretty to me, but Ynn was something special. She had a quiet beauty. The way she moved, stood, and talked appealed to me. She was like my Momma, but a kid. Her nice spring dress came down passed her knees, and her apricot hair had a pink bow in it. She was very girly, but an Irathient girl. She walked past my booth, and I saw her following the other girls through the Bazaar.

"Inyee hena bredacka yo apia," Momma said smilingly. I looked back at her, and scowled. The English translating was, "You have eyes or desires for her."

"Me ni vordi," I said. That translated to, "No I don't"

"Tommy," she said. I need to stress that she put a lot of stress on my name. 'Inyee snea kadacko." That translated to, "Tommy, you have to be confident."

"Soya, Momma," I said softly. "Soka es prapai forya inyee." That translated to, "Okay, Momma. She is beautiful like you."

Momma smiled. "Nayno zasha prapai, medano?" That translated to, "She's not as beautiful, right?" I looked over at her, but didn't say anything, and then Momma said, "Ni vitai." That translated to, "I see."

"Momma. Inyee na prapai," I said. "Drado prapai." That translated to, "Momma, you are beautiful. Very beautiful."

"Viti soya, Tommy," she said as she sat behind me. I just looked at her, and teared up, and then she apologized. "NIa gagayaya," she said. "Nia oshea." That translated to, "It's okay, Tommy." But she said it in such a way as to say I hurt her feelings, and that was the reason I started to cry. No child, especially an adopted child, wanted to hurt their parents because I always thought they'd leave me somewhere in the Badlands to die. The rest of it translated to, "I'm kidding. I'm sorry."

I watched Ynn walk back up to the area by herself, and I asked, "Miat es nuwada?" That translated to, "What is your name?"

"Ynn," she said, "Miat es nuwada?" She asked as she pointed to me.

"Tommy," I said, "Inyee na drado prapai," I said with a smile. That translated to, "You are very beautiful."

"Tommy likes those older women," Mister Shooty said from across the way.

"Ni forya Ynn. Soka es prapai," I said. That translated to, "I like, Ynn. She is beautiful."

"Soya," Ion said. That translated to, "Okay."

"He never said that to me," Rachel said. "I'm a little jealous."

"I see why," Ion said with a smirk on his face.

"Shut up, Ion," Rachel snapped back.

"Inyee tahani," Rynn said. That translated to, "You tease."

"Ni sho geeta tahani inyee," I said. That translated to, "I will never tease you."

My mother stood up, stirred the soup, and started selling it while I sat in the back of the booth drawing on my pad. After meeting Ynn, all I did was draw pictures of her in my notebook. She would sit in the rear of the Shooty's booth, look over at me, and smile. She then walked over to my booth, handed me some candy, and said, "Eerah."

I replied, "Ahiha," which translated to, "Thank you."

After that day, all I thought about was Ynn nonstop, and Momma said, "Inyee na dulliwadae inka Rynn." She laughed, and said, "Mir, inyee na." She basically said, "You're enamoured with Rynn," and I thought that was true. I was only five-years-old, and Rynn was nine at the time. But when it came to the rest of what she said, I'm not going to lie. It angered me. "You're just a boy." "Mir, inyee na," basically translated to, "You're a child." But when directed at an individual, the word "Thatana" or "Just" was implied, and it meant, "You're not man enough to have such feelings or you're not man enough to do some job."

The next day at the Bazaar, I studied my lessons, and when the Shootys showed up, I didn't see Rynn. It saddened me, and Momma asked why I was crying.

"Na inyee ooduka?" She asked with a grimace. That translated to, "Are you sick?"

"Nia ugbe vittan yo Rynn," I said. Unfortunately, it was loud enough for Mister Shooty to hear, and he laughed. That translated to, "I'm heart broken for Rynn."

"Tommy's a little romantic," Mister Shooty said. "I know how you feel, son."

"But isn't he too young for these feelings?" Momma asked.

"Not at all," he said, "In a few years he'll forget all about her."

"Shosha wai sho vita Rynn kobio," Momma said. That translated to, "Maybe we will visit Rynn today."

I gasped. My heart filled with so much joy that it overwhelmed me. It might have been the greatest idea that I had ever heard up to that point. I stood in the middle of our booth, one hand behind my back, and thought about Ynn for a moment. I feared my silly behavior would mess everything up with her because Irocuz accused me of acting stupid all the time. I sat down in back of the booth, and as soon as I did, a white man approached Mister Shooty's booth, and cursed him out.

"I don't give a damn," he said, "What are you doing with this white child?" He asked.

I didn't know what was happening, and Momma pleaded with the man to leave, but he called her a slight. Mister Shooty stood up from the couch in the back of their booth, and said, "You should leave."

Momma said, "I'm begging you, sir. Go!"

Rynn's house…

Momma and I walked up to the small cottage near the Shooty's house, and it was a beautiful home. It had the white picket fence, pows, and other animals on the land. In the rear of the house and down the hill, was a river. When we knocked on the front door, Rynn answered, and she said, "Tommy!"

"Na inyani freniodi eerah?" Momma asked. That translated to, "Are your parents here?"

"Thei," she said, "Momma!" She exclaimed.

Rynn and I sat in the front yard, and played as kids played. We first ended up playing tag, and then she accidentally pushed me down on the ground. She picked me back up, and then said, "Nia oshea." She wiped all the grass off me, and then we sat down again. She smelled like the fresh outside, and I could tell she had recently showered. "Ni hena fi moriolo yo inyee."

She basically said, "I have a poem for you," and then I asked, "Braya!" That translated to, "Recite."

"Soya," she said.

Poem

Kadia neegi trania sedda

Retana's mestma bringi es neegi,

Apia fediar sneedic twada.

Apia sadara pataea es fi dwiana;

Oot koso ta sa cronatea.

Ageta pataea wadias pataea

Ta Eden puhumitae quavo

Ta narco nayos chogack thezidu

Kadia neegi trania sedda

Niya Robert Frost

End of Poem

Momma and Rynn's momma sat on the front porch, and Momma clapped when she finished with the poem written by Robert Frost. "Propai, Rynn." That translated to, "Beautiful, Rynn."

"Yannae inyee presanobia?" She asked.

That translated to, 'Did you understand?"

"Thei," I said. She didn't know that I spent every day studying the Old World books Irocuz found on his scavenger hunts. Momma constantly told me I had to study to prepare to be a leader in the new world, and she often assigned me to memorize poems. "Wodi shazo es nasi." That translated to, "Our youth is fleeting."

"Inyee na gobrao," she said, "uado mir, inyee na." I looked up at Momma on the porch, and she was already telling me to stay calm by the look in her eyes. Rynn told me I was smart, but she also said that I was just a child. Even though it was true, I didn't like that. For the next six months, up until Rynn's birthday in April, we met for lunch one day out of the week. It was important to understand, at least in my mind, that Rynn and I wasn't something that just happened. The horrid ways of our society separated us, but the same cruelty brought us back together.

I didn't want Irisa thinking-on any level-she did something wrong because I always had my heart set on Rynn. Even if she decided she couldn't look past my uniform, I would still chase after her until I exhausted all my pleads. Irisa sat at the counter, reading her romance novel, and I lay on my bed listening to music with her scent all over me. It was about two in the afternoon on a Saturday, and suddenly I heard a rap on the door. Irisa quickly hopped into her pants, and then asked, "Who is it?"

"It's the Doc," She said. When Irisa opened the door, the first thing the doctor said was, "Why aren't you two dirtbags listening to my orders. No sex means no sex."

"How do you know?" She asked.

"When Rynn was here, this place smelled like fresh flowers," she said, "Now it smells like sin and frustration."

"I didn't move," I said.

"I will call Rynn," She said.

"I won't do it again," I said. "Just don't call Rynn because she'll go off on us if she finds out we went against your orders."

"She's smarter than both of you idiots put together," she said.

After Doc Yewll left, I finally walked around my hovel, took a shower, and used the bathroom. Irisa went to work, and she worked the office overnight with Tom Lafferty, and then Nolan would come back to work on Sunday. I could smell the Iratheints' pretzel sticks coming from the Bazaar, and it was something they did the first Saturday of the month. All the Iratheints came into town, baked pretzel bread, and sold it. The townspeople voted on the bread that tasted the best. The Iraths working in the Bazaar weren't anything like Sukar's people. They were peaceful people who farmed, taught bowhunting, and trapping to their members. The women all had incredible cooking and baking skills, and presented themselves in an ascetic manner. They called themselves Irzu's Iae, and that translated to God's People. I didn't know the exact number of Irzu's Iae near Defiance, but there was more than ten.

Often, more than once a week, I found myself sitting with them, eating with them, and speaking with them, and from what I can tell, they considered me a friend of the tribe. I didn't want them commuting between Defiance and their home without knowing a group of men preyed on Irathiient families. I slowly walked over to the Lawkeeper's office, and Nolan was out front looking rough and somewhat drunk.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"I need to contact Rynn," I said with a stern look. "There's bands of marauders attacking Irathient families."

"That's way down south," he said. He sat on the steps of the lawkeeper's office, took out his flask, and took a drink. "You're paranoid."

"Not really," I said. "Just ensuring my family is safe."

I grabbed the handset, and said, "Rynn, teetick es Lil' Panther. Na inyee soya? widaco," I said. That translated to, "Rynn, this is Lil' Panther. Are you okay? Over."

"Lil Panther, povachingy es soya. Tayado lacita. Widaco," She said. That translated to, "Lil Panther, everything is okay. Please rest. Over."

"Thei, baby. Wa. " I said. That translated to, "Yes, baby. Out."

I meandered my way through the Bazaar, and Irisa walked up behind me acting crazy about it. "I gave you sex so you'll go to sleep," she said, "You need to rest, Tommy."

I laughed a little, but my stomach hurt so badly that I had to stop walking. She walked in front of me, arms folded, and then cleared her throat. "I'll just be a minute." I looked at her, the way she stood with her hands on her hips, and smiled. She grabbed me by the right arm, walked with me, and I said, "I talked to Rynn. Everything is okay at home."

"Good," she said. "She told me you're leaving Defiance in two years."

I stopped in front of the Irzu's Lae, and sat down at the table with Irisa, and then said, "I want you to come with me."

She sighed, looked over at the Irathient women cooking food, and then said, "You won't want me then." Popping her knuckles, she leaned back in her chair, and then tapped on the table. I could tell she was nervous, but I didn't know exactly why.

"I'm not with you just to pass time, Irisa," I said calmly. "When I leave Defiance for the farm, I want you with me."

"Where does that leave Nolan?" She said with a grimace. "I can't just up and leave Nolan defenseless."

"What are you saying?" I asked. "He's a grown man."

I looked over at the Irathient girl, Rory, who was about eighteen, thin, and long orange hair with a plastic bag on her head, and raised up two fingers for two pretzels. I pulled out ten dollars worth of script, and placed it on the table. She said, "Soya."

"Not really saying anything," she said softly. "You could have told me this earlier." Sighing, she wiped her hands on her pants legs, and then pulled out her journal. She wrote down all the important moments because moving to the farm was a big deal. By the time we decided to leave, she'd have spent a total of two weeks thinking about it on and off over the next two years. Rynn was the same way. They didn't do much of anything without giving it a lot of thought. "I will think about …"

"I know you, Irisa," I said with a scowl on my face. "Don't get flighty because you can't deal with the commitment."

Rory set the pretzels down on the table, and I handed her the script. "Eerah."

"Ahiha," she said softly.

Irisa took a bite of her pretzel, and then said, "I dream of living on a farm."

"I know you do," I said. I placed my right hand on her soft. left cheek, and then said, "We can farm it. Have children. They'll grow strong. We can raise pows. It will be beautiful."

"That's just a dream," she said.

I laughed for a moment, and then I laughed harder.

"What?" She asked.

"I have the land. I have the farm. I have pows roaming about it," I said, "Please tell me the problem."

"Am I wrong thinking this is a bit premature?" She asked.

"Yes," I said with a grimace. "So, Rynn helped you move things into our hovel. Did she not do that?"

"Yeah," she said.

"So, when you get off work, where are you going to rest your head?" I asked.

She pointed to me, and then smiled.

"That's right. Irisa, You and Rynn are my family. It's that simple," I said, "I shouldn't ever have to say it again. I feel the only time we need to discuss our relationship is when we're talking about additions to it."

"Oh. You mean children?" She asked.

"Is that something you dream about?" I asked.

"Of course," she said as she wrote in her diary. Major things went into her diary like the first time we kissed, the first time we made love, and things like that. Another good example was when she learned I could speak Irathient. She checked in her diary, threw it in my face, and said, "Check the diary, Tommy! I don't see anything about you speaking Irathient in it." She had picked the diary off the ground, thumbed through the pages, and said, "Tommy's first fart in front of me is listed, but nothing about you speaking Irathient."

"Soya," I said softly.

"Soya," she said. "Just no lying to me, Tommy. I don't deserve that."

"I've been deadly honest," I said, "I have fears like you and Rynn."

"What fears?" She asked.

"I fear one day you might not want me," I said. I reached my right hand over to her, and she held it with a gentleness.

She glared across the table at me for only a second, and then looked down at the street. "Ni fachi inyee sho droadia nena. " I looked at her for a long moment, and made it known I disapproved of that. I'd never hate her. I would breakup before I ever hated her. If I thought I could hate her, I wouldn't be anywhere near her. She basically said, "I fear you will grow to hate me." It's a fear I didn't have.

"Droadiai inyee zodica snea droadiai nena," I smiled for a moment, and then said, "Ni vordi drodia nena." That translated to, "Hating you would be hating me. I don't hate me."

"Rory, rihurtha vava nena?" She asked. That translated to, "Rory, give me some water." She looked over at me, and asked, "Rihurtha, inyee fefi?"

"Me," I said. That meant, "No."

"Inyee norwavado rireeza sheshe," she said, "Inyee na kiani." I looked at her for a moment, and tried to read her face to see if her guilt tripping me into drinking water came from the heart. The English translation was, "You need to drink something. You are hurt."

"Na inyee fopadiae?" I asked with a grimace. That translated to, "Are you concerned."

"Miat?" She asked. The scowl on her face was a nasty one, and then she said loudly, "Inyee na prafi cruvadic nena udicka, Tommy. Inyee presana Nia fopadiae, dick! " I knew I'd upset her by asking if she was concerned about me because she had already stated it loudly, and through her actions, she showed me that she cared. She said to me in English, "You are pissing me off, Tommy. You know I'm concerned, dick!"

Rory gave us both waters, and I paid her, and then Irisa stood up with her water and pretzel. "Miat?" I asked.

"Ni sho snea niya sheishei," She said. "Go home." That translated to, "I will see you later."

"Soya," I said. "Iraths, chodi ibra radaries " That translated to, "Tell the Iraths about the killers."

"Ni sho," She said. That translated to, "I will."

I lumbered my way around the corner, up the stairway, and back over to my hovel. The moon was high in the sky, and the night air had a heat to it. Irisa walked in the distance drinking her water, but I saw her throw the rest of her pretzel in the trash. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw a white haired man ascend of the steps. His whiteness was almost off-putting, but it was indicative of Castithans. "Datak!"

"Tommy," he said. His voice nasally and raspy, and then he said, "It's Rynn." He had a mobile two-way radio in his hand.

"What about her?" I asked frantically.

"It's the killers," Rynn said on the radio, 'If you can hear this, Tommy. Come home now. They're headed this way."

"She's right," Datak said, "There's a band of marauders about an hour out from Irocuz's farm."

"Oh, Irzu. Can you lend me a roller, Datak?" I asked.

"What can you do for me?" He asked.

"It's Rynn, Datak," I said, "You know she's my wife."

He pulled out a set of keys from his waistband, and said, "When I need your help in the future, I don't want any lip, Tommy."

"I will give you whatever you need. My family is in danger, and they're all I have."

I grabbed my detonator and other weapons from my hovel, piled them into the vehicle, and charged my way through the Badlands. The bugs beat against the window, and the guts caked on to the point I could barely see. I used the windshield wipers, but it made things worse. I left out of Defiance without the right provisions: gas, water, and food. All I had were my weapons, and I didn't tell Irisa what I was doing. It was dark, and the terrain was unforgiving. I knew the way home, and I sped across the harsh land at seventy miles an hour. The bumps and hills caused my wound to bleed, but I didn't care. I expected to be home within forty-five minutes, and it was the longest forty-five minutes of my life.

I grabbed the mike, and said, "Rynn, hide. You know the place."

"Lil Panther, I'm with our friends," she said in a soft voice. "Hidden. Hurry."

A sigh of relief came over me because that meant she hid down in the weapon's basement in the barn. Irocuz built a large room that stored all of our weapons that we found rummaging through the countryside. This meant she had powerful weapons at her disposal, and could stave off any marauders who attacked our property.

When I arrived on the scene, about a mile down the road, and out of the view of the marauders, I watched them through my powerful binoculars. I rummaged through the glove compartment of the roller, and found some pain meds. It was nothing more than ibuprofen, and I took four pills. They were brown tubular pills, and I had hoped they'd mitigate the pain I felt. I strapped on my handguns, detonator, and a VBI assault rifle with three thirty round magazines. I came into the farm on a clandestine route that wasn't easily seen from the house. The pain pills had deadened the pain to a certain degree, but I still ached. Suddenly, I heard a woman cry loudly, and I didn't know what to make of it. After the second loud screech, I heard one of the animals scream.

"Shut up, bitch!" He exclaimed. "Where's that black Irath?"

I realized at that moment that the intruders had Ireena because I heard Ivy crying loudly. She screamed for her momma, and then the marauder said, "Keep the brat quiet or I will." When I looked over my right shoulder, Rynn was looking right at me with a Saw strapped over her shoulder, and it had a full belt on it. I pulled out my detonator because I didn't have any attentions of letting any of them live. We crept up on the barn, but stayed about two hundred feet apart. She came from the back corner, and I was on the front corner of the building. I saw four marauders standing in front of the old barn, and then I saw my Momma laying on the ground near the house. She wasn't moving at all, and I immediately became angered. I fired three balls of fire at the marauders in front of the house, and the balls bounced violently across the yard. When it hit them, in burned them to their core. It happened so efficiently that they didn't have time to scream.

Quickly, and without hesitation, I ran to my Momma, and she lay on the ground so quiet that it frightened me. "Momma. Na inyee soya?" I asked. I was asking if she was okay, and when I shook her shoulder, she grabbed my second handgun out of my leg holster. Blood dripped off her forehead, and then she grimaced.

She whispered. "Tommy, ohgraway moregyna." She looked at me with her yellow eyes, and then said, "ohgraway morgana, Tommy." She hopped off the ground, went to the other side of the house, and fired upon two marauders, and they fell to the ground dead. When I ran into the barn, the marauder hit me in back of the head, and I fell to the ground. When I looked up, Rynn had attacked the man, and they were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. He struck Rynn in the face, and then Ireena raced across the barn, and jumped on the guy's back. He flipped her onto the ground, and then punched her in the face. When I went for my ankle weapon, it wasn't there because my Momma had taken it.

He grabbed Ireena by the hair, took out a blade, and held it to her face. "I'll cut this cockroach up, Arkhunter."

Rynn stood to her feet, and said, "You'll never make it out of here."

"There's nothing I hate more than a bunch of dirty Iraths," he said. "But I own this little heifer, and she's coming back with me."

"Deputy Frank kidnapped her from my land," I said.

"That was my boy," he said, "But she's belongs to me."

My mother ran into the barn behind the elder Franks, put the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. His brains flew everywhere, and I actually jumped because I didn't expect to see that. "Nobody fucks with my family," Momma said.

Suddenly, another roller pulled up, and I heard Irisa's voice, "Tommy."

"In here," I said as I lay on the ground. Rynn lay with me, and held my head up. I had blood leaking all over my shirt, and then Irisa said, "Is everybody okay?"

"We need to get Tommy to the house," Rynn said, "His wound reopened." All the women helped me to my feet, and walked me to the house. I had a room in the house, but I usually stayed in the loft. When they took me to my room, Rynn took off my shirt, and began to clean my wound.

"I can do that," Irisa said as she stood on the other side of the bed looking directly at Rynn.

She looked up at her for a moment, and then grimaced. I could tell she was reading Irisa's body language. "I have it," she said with a calmness. Her voice sounded like she owned the situation, and the house, and in most instances, she did. Her hair looked like a tangled, apricot mess, but it was my Rynn nonetheless. The marauders bruised her face, tore her clothes, and pulled her hair. She used some antibacterial soap to remove the grit from her hands. Effortlessly, she attended to my needs, but Irisa had an emptiness about her. I held her hand, and then she edged closer to the bed. I felt her warm up a bit. For some reason, I didn't think she felt like an essential part of the family.

"Are you okay, Irisa?" I asked softly.

She smiled, but an awkward smile, almost forced and unnatural. "You know? It's just I feel a little jilted being left behind."

"Enhance your calm, Irisa," Rynn said, "If he had waited any longer to get here, we'd be dead."

"I see that now," she said.

Rynn grabbed some alcohol out of the nightstand next to my bed, and soaked a needle in it for a moment. "It's going to hurt, but you know that," she said calmly. She looked up at Irisa, and then said, "Wipe him down, and then I will mend him."

"Okay," she said. She wet a cloth in some warm water that Ireena brought into the room, and began cleaning the wound. She did a good job of wiping off the excess blood. Momma had a hold of Ivy, and my sister wiped the sweat off my forehead with a cool towel.

"We need to make sure our brothers and sisters in the Badlands know about these miscreants," Momma said as she held Ivy high on her right hip. "We can't afford not to be prepared. Those devil from Apostasy kidnapped and raped my baby. Never again will we let something like this happen. We won today because we fought as a family." She looked over at Irisa, and then said, "I'm talking to you too."

"Everybody needs a weapon on them always," I said. "We'll keep a constant eye on the roads leading to the property, and move tactically throughout the compound."

Rynn stuck a stick in my mouth. "Bite down, baby," she said calmly. "It's going to hurt."

When she began the process of fixing my stitches, it sent a pain through my body that caused me to chomp down on it. Tears rolled down my face, and I couldn't help. Irisa turned away for a moment, but Rynn kept mending.

"I'll be done in a second," Rynn said, "You got this." Ivy started crying, and then Momma took her to the next room. When Rynn finished, she immediately took the stick out of my mouth, and said, "All done."

I sat up in the bed, scooted back against the headboard, then asked everybody to leave except Irisa and Rynn. Casually, I walked over to my dresser, pulled out a t-shirt, and slid it over my head. "What happened, Rynn?"

She thought for a second, and then said, "The marauders moved in on us quickly," she said. "I grabbed my weapon, headed towards the barn, and the marauders were already on the property."

"I don't know if this is all of them," I said with a grimace.

"Maybe it'll be best if the family comes to Defiance," Irisa said.

"You're not going to use this incident to uproot us, Tommy," Rynn snapped. "Don't use this mess for your own agenda."

"Am I bad for wanting you in Defiance with us?" I asked.

"This farm feels natural," she said, "Defiance is full of backstabbers and hypocrites."

"That's for sure," irsia said,

"That's not helping our case, Irisa," I said.

"I know, but she's right," Irisa said.

Rynn laughed. "You can come home more. How about that?"

"I'm still on duty," Irisa said, "I have to get back."

"I better go to," I said.

"You can't stay?" Rynn asked.

"I'm tempted, but Datak wants his roller back. Besides, I don't want Irisa traveling in the Badlands alone," I said. "You have Momma and Ireena here. Where's Irocuz's detonator?"

"It's in the back room," she said.

"Okay. Irisa and I will be back at the end of the week."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I walked out to the Bazaar on Thursday morning, and purchased Irisa and I a nice breakfast of biscuits and gravy. When I walked back to my hovel, Irisa was still completely naked, and pretty much stayed like that most of the time. I braided her hair right before we engaged in coitus, and she looked good that way. She dug into the food, and ate like she was starving, but I didn't mind. She looked somewhat innocent-right in front of me-with her bare bottom pressed against the wooden chair.

"Rynn burned all the bodies," I said with a grimace. I didn't see her flinch at all, and I watched her closely. "She made a huge pit on the south end of the property, and dumped all the bodies into it."

"What do you want to do about Apostasy?" She asked softly. Looking up at me from her diary, she said, "They have tons of Iraths in bondage."

"Es nowdi wodi brusta?" I asked. In English, I asked her, "Is this our business?"

She looked at me for a moment, threw her fork on the table, and said, "Thei. Viti wodi lae." She said it with a lot of base in her voice, and I realized I angered her. She said, "Yes, It's our people." She confirmed that Irath bondage was our business, and I agreed with that.

"Oshea," I said softly. "Ni nena snea podiwoa." I looked down at the table for a moment, and thought about my words. I said, "Sorry. I have to be contrite." I wanted her to know that I'm in the fight. "Trania wai chodi seweibe?" I asked. My words translated to, "Can we tell somebody?"

"Can I be honest for a moment?" She asked as she played with her food.

"Haven't you always?" I asked. "Ni geeta presanay inyee twada shido." That translated to, "I never known you to hold words."

She looked at me, and said in a gritty voice, "Inyee na fi radaires." I looked at her for a moment, and I didn't have any idea what she was going to say next. She called me a killer, and I knew this wasn't going to be nice. "Inyee na forya sweeva. Inyee na pritika. Trobree." That translated to, "You are like ice. You are cold. Dark."

"Comick na inyee eerah?" I asked with a grimace. "If I'm such a killer, cold, and dark, why are you with me? Why are you here?"

"Nia fi radaries," she said softly. "Nia pritika. Nia trobree. Tro Badlands dina wata." She pointed at the table, and then said, "This is who we are, and we can't escape that." That translated to, "I am a killer. I am cold. I am dark. The Badlands made us." She reached across the table, and held my hands, and then said, "Oot wai shwei tawnio." That tranlated to, "But we love freedom."

"Wai hena Spirit Riders, tro Demon Bikers, uado tro Outliers," I said. "Wai norwavado shidda." I looked at Irisa for a moment, and she shrugged her shoulders. I simply said, "We have Spirit Riders, the Demon Bikers, and the Outliers. We need family."

"We have to do something, Tommy," she said, "We won't be happy as long as our people are slaves."

I sat back in my chair, and Irisa picked up the trash off the table. She threw everything into the trash bin, walked toward the bed, and I swooped in from behind her, and tossed her onto the soft, unmade bed. We rolled around for some time. I apologized to her several times while we made love for asking her why she was with me. I thought she was being hateful at first, and now I felt somewhat bad about it. But at the same time, I couldn't deny her wisdom. I had killed plenty of men through the years, and it was part of business. Rynn was the same. I had killed people who tried to hurt Rynn, and I never looked back on it with regrets.

We fell asleep in each other's arms. But as I tossed and turned, I gave what she said a lot of thought. Rynn was the key to freeing the Iraths in Apostasy, and I think Irisa knew that too. Rynn came from an educated class of Irathients, and I could tell by the way she carried herself. Irosa and Irocuz came from the educated class too, and that was the reason I was so well-read. Sukar did his best in raising her, but he was from the lower classes, and didn't have the grace needed to raise a princess. She still had the grace, and I always saw it on display when she walked with me.

Epilogue

After two, quiet weeks back on the job, I lost interest in being a law-keeper. Irisa took an exception with my abrupt change of heart about staying in Defiance, but the farm called to me. The hot sun beat against my head, and sweat poured down my cheeks. I looked right at her, straight in her face, as she stood next to the roller. I sat on the steps of the law-keepers station, drank some water, and ruminated on my life. I didn't belong in Defiance, at least not as a law-keeper. Irocuz died. Ireena was home. I needed to be home. I became a law-keeper because it would help me find her, and in a way, it did.

Rynn wanted me on the farm, helping, and taking my place as the first son. Besides, I left the farm because of Ireena, and now that she was back, staying away from my home any longer was madness.

Irisa sat against the roller for the last thirty minutes, looking at me and brow-beat me like I stole something. She made uncomfortable sighs, and grunts. I saw the disappointment on her face, but she didn't cry. It was anger. Her palpable gaze glistened with displeasure, and she made sure I knew it. I said I'd leave in two years, but I hadn't given it my full, undivided attention. Now that I had time to think about things, I wanted to go home. I longed for the farm. But I didn't want her assuming a forty minute drive was enough to stand between us because it wasn't.

"What happens now?" She asked with her hands in her pockets. Her thin shades hung off her face, and she didn't have an expression at all. "The farm's rich. The soil is doable. I understand, but what about us?" I looked over at her for a moment, at her vulnerable face, and I knew she'd think my leaving Defiance meant the end of us. I didn't think that at all. In fact, I took exception that she thought my feelings were at the surface level instead of deeply rooted into my soul.

"That hasn't changed. Nothing has changed with us at all," I said. "I'm forty minutes from you." I paused for a moment, looked over at the Castithans down the street, and then I turned my attention back to Irisa. She was crying. "Rynn and I have no problems with you living with us. We don't. You can pack up your stuff, put it on the back of my roller, and take off right now."

She smirked. "I'm not leaving Nolan in the hands of these savages." I walked over to her. She had her arms folded, and it definitely meant she didn't desire my touch. I touched her on her left shoulder, and gently pulled her into me. "What about the two years?"

"I gave it a lot of thought," I said softly. "Rynn burned all those bodies on her own. I should have done…"

"You were hurt, Tommy," She said, "You're still hurt."

"It's time for me to return home," I said, "This changes nothing between us unless you say it does."

"I will come to the farm on the weekends," she said. "I think we can work this."

To be continued….


End file.
